The Goonfather discovered this humble eatery in Tanjong Pagar a few weeks ago when he was waiting for me to finish an audition nearby.
A search on Google revealed that this place is already well-known and reviews confirm my opinion that Qun Zhong Eating House serves the best xiao long bao in Singapore. Yes, better than Din Tai Fung.
Of course, I’m not saying that conclusively. It’s quite possible that there are better. But until I find the better ones, this is it.
The menu calls it Little Juicy Steamed Meat Dumplings. And is it ever juicy.
The key characteristics of a good xiao long bao are thin skin and juicy innards.
This XLB does not have an ideally thin skin, but it’s thin enough to not distract from the main selling point: the juicy factor.
The moment you pop it in your mouth and break the skin, your tongue is bathed in sweet meat juice, delighting your taste buds with a flavour that is almost sensuous.
There is a lot more “soup” in this XLB than any other I’ve tried. And it’s good.
This XLB comes with a price tag of $1 a piece, with a set order of seven pieces.
Be careful when you lift the XLB off the tray. Sometimes it sticks to the cloth it’s sitting on and if you yank it too hard, the skin will break and all the precious juice will flow out into nothingness. Quite painful when that happens.
I read that the owner and staff are quite surly, so don’t expect good service. It was quite okay when we visited, apart from a mild incident where the Goonfather wanted to order more food but the waitress ignored him so he got fed up and decided not to order any more.
The wait was rather long, too, even though the eatery is rather small. If I don’t remember wrongly, we waited about 30 minutes for our two sets of XLB.
But I am of the opinion that Singaporeans are veritable food whores. As long as the food is out of the world, service doesn’t matter.
I’d go back again, and soon.
Qun Zhong Eating House
21 Neil Road, Singapore 088814
Tel: 6221 3060 (Reservations not allowed)
Opening hours: 11:30 am to 3 pm / 5:30 pm to 9 pm
Close on every Wednesday
ok. my stomach just growled. all thanks to you. >.<
@Sheylara: Hey, that’s within walking distance from where I work! Next time you and the Goonfather feel like XLB, lemme know. Of course, I’ll prolly just have a drink…
Oh dear, all the those workouts efforts are halfed. Eric will make you done one, two, three workouts again ;)
I m hungry too……. early in the morning………
7.27am now…..
=_= I believe good enviroment, good service and good food have to go together.
Bad service = bad mood = loss of appetite and mood to enjoy the good ~
haha u guys found this place too! the queue can get quite long during peak hours though, but the food is good… did you try the “dou sha guo bing” there? that was delicious as well.
JayWalk: You’re welcome! lol
RN1209: Er… we’d probably only go there during the weekends, and then you won’t be there, lol.
tiger4: Eh… I still need to eat what. I’m not on a starvation diet! lol. XLB is way better than fried chicken or laksa or whatever. :P
SpiritAngelo: That’s very true lah. But sometimes must make an exception for exceptionally good food. Nothing is perfect in the world so sometimes have to close one eye. :P But if it’s mediocre food and bad service, then the place can wind down already.
Rykarx: Hmm… I couldn’t eat anything else cos of my current low-fat diet. Haha. In any case, we went there straight after dinner so we weren’t that hungry. The XLB was more like dessert. lol.
>.< u make it sound that delicious that I MUST TOLERATE the service to eat it…….
Maybe I will go by some day ~~~
Maybe try going during off peak times, might be okay. We went there on a Sunday night around 8+ and the service wasn’t noticeably bad. I didn’t even realise the place was infamous for bad service until after I went home and did a search for reviews on that place!