Dim sum – bite-sized morsels with big enjoyment. I, along with many others, enjoy a good dim sum session. So when it came time to shortlisting the best dim sum place, there were a few to choose from. Eventually, The Dim Sum Place became our pick.
The Dim Sum Place has several outlets in Singapore, but the one with the highest rating is located in The Centrepoint. Our criteria for “best-rated” is based on the overall rating versus amount of reviews, and the place must focus mainly on dim sum and not say, zi char or other Chinese dishes, for example.
At time of writing, The Dim Sum Place at The Centrepoint has 3,865 reviews on Google, and sits at 4.8 stars. Pretty solid!
I arrived at the opening time of 10.30am, and the restaurant was devoid of other customers. However, it didn’t take long for a slow trickle of other guests to start entering. Even on a weekday morning, this place had pretty decent footfall.
Ordering food is done via QR code, so I whipped my phone out and got to work.
What I tried at The Dim Sum Place
I decided that I’d get some dim sum staples – Steamed Chicken Siew Mai with Shrimp (S$6.90) and Crystal Shrimp Dumpling (S$6.90), or har gow. I also decided to get a couple of my personal favourites, Deep Fried Carrot Cake (S$7.90) and Molten Salted Egg Custard Bun (S$6.90).
And finally, for a wildcard, I ordered the Beancurd Skin Roll with Shrimp in Superior Sauce (S$6.90). I also threw in a Classic Iced Coffee (S$6) for good measure because caffeine helps my brain work. (Sort of.)
The Classic Iced Coffee arrived first. I took a sip, and it was too sweet for my taste. There wasn’t any option on the menu to have it with less sugar, which was odd. The coffee taste wasn’t as robust as I hoped – the drink is overall more milk-forward.
The next thing that arrived was the Deep Fried Carrot Cake, served with a sweet black sauce. It smelled really good, and was fried to golden brown perfection. I grabbed my chopsticks and excitedly took a bite.
Nope.
Underneath the beautiful crispy exterior was an extremely unpleasant texture. The taste was fine – the carrot cake had subtle hints of shallot, but the texture was a complete turn-off. It was very mushy and mealy, almost dry.
Not long after I’d sampled the carrot cake, the remaining dishes arrived together in one towering ensemble, enveloped in billowing clouds of steam.
The Steamed Chicken Siew Mai with Shrimp is exactly what it says on the tin: chicken with shrimp. It was quite tasty, with a nice, moist chicken filling and crunchy shrimp pieces. I kind of wished the chicken had a little more bite to it, but it’s satisfying enough.
The Crystal Shrimp Dumpling on the other hand, I didn’t like as much. While the skin was a good consistency and had a nice chew, something about the shrimp just felt off, even though it hit the right flavour notes. It was a very average har gow, nothing spectacular.
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I turned my attention to the wildcard dish next. While I’m familiar with fried beancurd skin rolls, I don’t ever recall having tried a version where it’s soaked in sauce.
The beancurd rolls were very chewy, understandably so for being soaked in sauce. I couldn’t taste any of the shrimp because the sauce overpowered everything. The dish also got quite salty after sometime, and was hard to keep eating.
I kept the Molten Salted Egg Custard Bun for last since everything else was savoury, and this was sweet (or so I assumed).
The bun oozed with the golden custard, and it looked promising. But upon finally taking a bite, I found that the custard was not as flavourful as it looked. It lacked the salted egg yolk punch I was expecting and just tasted oddly milky.
Final thoughts
My honest thoughts were: How is this being given 5 stars?
While I liked the siew mai, everything else was quite mediocre. It’s not terrible dim sum (there are far worse examples), but it’s also nothing noteworthy. Maybe the other dishes are better, but whatever I had definitely didn’t live up to expectations – especially at this price point.
Expected damage: S$5.90 – S$15.90 per pax
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