Dragon One@De Garden, Ipoh.

On 19th Feb, celebrated my bestie's 23th birthday! Knew some of you will be saying why am I being so straight forward exposing her age. Nahh, no big deal, am going to be 23rd this year too! Be proud of your own age, human grows every day, aren't we?

Supposedly buy her a dinner at the new Korea Restaurant-DAORAE at De Garden, too bad it is full house! Frankly speaking, I never expect Ipoh-rian would be that generous in spending that big amount on Korean food. :P
Ipoh's branch of DAORAE is still very new and I haven get the chance to try it yet. Anyway, I had tried the one in PJ, not bad thou. To me, the price was at affordable rate but still depends on what you order from the menu.

Since there is no table to fit 7 of us at DAORAE, decided to try DRAGON ONE instead. It's another new food outlet, previously was T.O.S. According to a friend of mine, Dragon One serve Shanghai food and it is not bad. Thus, we give a try. Hmm, Dragon One? Sounds similar with something in mind? Yep! It's Dragon-i, the famous Oriental restaurant with numbers of branches in KL/PJ. Anyhow, I got stunted awhile as I was wondering are they copying the famous Dragon-i? This restaurant are serving the similar signature dish as Dragon-i too. *slap slap*. Probably this outlet has its very own specialty, stop thinking too much and walked in.

Dragon One

The Menu. Looks like those menu at a high rated restaurant right? As the saying goes : "Never judge a book by it's cover". Upon opening the menu, there's used tissue(very dirty) found in between the pages and the whole menu was sticky and oily! FAILED!

Flipped and made decision what to order so that each of us can sample the food. Pictures of foods were so tempting and we were all drooling. Made our order and the food served in less than 15minutes, at least gain back some credits from us.

Hey look! They've got some features in the Chinese newspaper, guess it is not that bad huh?

Ordered the signature dish Steamed Shanghainese Meat Dumpling with Superior Soup RM6.

Since the restaurant claimed itself to be a Shanghainese food outlet serving the famous Xiao Long Bao, we ordered 2 of them to feed 7 of us. The dumpling are served hot in the bamboo baskets in which they were steamed. Usually, the dumplings served with vinegar with ginger(the sauce) but there is no sauces come along with the dumplings *disappointed*. Since the name called Meat Dumpling with Superior Soup, meaning there's soup inside the dumpling itself. Too bad, when we wanted to sip the soup after a small bite, there's only one or two drops of soup only, not even half of the spoon. So-called "tang jiao"（罐汤小笼包）, it is too dry and doesn't match with what they name it to be. First dish happen to be this disappointing, therefore RM6 for 3 dumplings are not worth eating. #FAILED 2! Still prefer the one at Dragon-i.

Lemon Ribena Ice Blended 烈火红唇 RM6.90

Ginger Lemon Honey RM4.50 Too sweet for my liking, does not have any honey taste, guess they replace with syrup. :P

Pretty Lady Buns 上海麻署二奶包 RM5. This taste good! Albeit a tad of sweetness but I still can accept that. There's two layer of fillings with the outer ones in white, no idea what is that called. The inner one tasted like corn, gooey-like and goes very well with the bun. The Chinese name for this snack is very funny if you know Chinese, it means the "second wife" and we spotted something on the bun which made us laughed wickedly. There is two dots on top of the buns which look like the nipples, hahaha! *smack head*

Our dinner, only this? No no no, continue reading.....

Char Koay Teow? NO! This is another signature dish offered by the waiter. He told us this is one of the hot item!! This is Stir-Fried Bean Sheet with Preserved Vegetable RM6.80. The flour skin was more springy in texture, rubber-like feeling when you chomp it down. Not too oily or too dry. One of the best dish as recommended. *thumbs up*

Jellyfish with Shredded Carrot RM7.80. The sauce was good but the jellyfish was nothing much to shout about. The jellyfish is not what we expected like we used to have at Japanese restaurant. Tasted kinda weird and all of us said NO to this appetizer.

Japanese Cucumber with Dried Shrimps RM4.20. Some people might think are we nuts? Paying 4bucks for a cucumber plate? We thought so at first but upon savoring, it changed our mind. This was an awesome appetizer, the sauce goes well with dried shrimps, carrots and cucumber with a tad of sweetness from the sauce. *thumbs up*

Black Sesame Dumpling with Peanut Powder RM4.80. Another good plate of dim sum. The only thing is the filling was abit too dry. Anyway, still one of the good plate.

Deep-Fried Spring Roll with Bacon & Yogurt RM5.80. It tasted creamy rather cheezy, doesn't feel like yogurt at all. Feel disgusted if eat more than a piece. Anyway, this snack plate not that bad. Cheese lovers would definitely ask for more. *although it's not made of cheese*

Stir-Fried Glutinous Rice Cake with Crab Roe & Shrimps RM11.80.

I like this dish as it is rich, creamy and delicious in flavor. But never ever finish this up all alone, you will regret and feel disgusted(jelak) of it! The rice cake was chewy enough, nyam!

Fried Rice Shanghai Style RM9.80. Personally like this dish very much as it is really satisfying. The rice was fried till fragrant with eggs. Topped with anchovies, dried fish(柴鱼), vegetables and a special sauce.

Baked La Mian with Cheese RM9.80. Guess they are trying to come out with a combination of western and asian but failed! The noodles inside was too dry and tasteless! It is a new creative concept of replacing spaghetti with La Mian but this plate was a failure.

Hot & Spicy Sauce La Mian RM8.80. This bowl of La Mian was very spicy and sour! The broth was good but the sourness and spiciness covered all up, I can't taste anything except spicy!

Minced Pork & Spicy Sauce La Mian 上海炸酱面 RM9.80. Another bowl of noodle but less spicy. Taste weird or maybe I am not used to Shanghai's style of cooking noodles with spicy sauce. Wat Tan Hor taste better than this. Simply a weird combination. Still prefer the Korean style(dry form) of "zha jiang mian" as they named it in Chinese.