With so many restaurants and eateries offering dim sum (dianxin) for lunch, what will make a restaurant stand out in its offering of the usual har kau (prawn dumpling), siew mai (pork dumpling) and char siew bao (pork bun)?

Most dim sum dishes revolve round the usual ingredients-- pork and seafood, especially prawns. A good dim sum chef is one who is able to creatively use these usual ingredients to concoct unusual dim sum dishes. But, ultimately, the overriding factor is-- the seafood must be FRESH and the pork should not smell.

Some makankakis (food buddies) highly recommended the dim sum at Man Fu Yuan at Hotel Inter-Continental to Makansutra and so, we decided to try out the place.

Stuck in a little corner of the hotel, it was easy to miss the signboard pointing to the restaurant. Besides the usual dining hall, there were also six private and five semi-private dining rooms at another end of the restaurant.

It was a rather limited dim sum menu with only 23 dishes and so it was easy to make up our minds on what to eat. We ordered the must-have dim sum dishes like char siew bao (steamed barbecued pork bun), har kau (steamed shrimp dumplings) and siew mai (steamed pork dumplings). The char siew bao had a light pastry with slightly moist filling while the har kau had strands of shark's fin in it. All these were generously loaded with really fresh ingredients, every mouthful was a shiok (satisfying) bite.

We liked the Steamed Dumplings with Dried Scallops and Crabmeat as the pastry skin was thin and stuffed with chunks of crabmeat whereas the Steamed Glutinous Rice wrapped with lotus leaf was fragrant and tasty.

Feeling adventurous, we tried some novel dim sum dishes to gauge the restaurant's dim sum creativity. Instead of the usual steamed yam cake, Man Fu Yuan offered a Steamed Black-eyed Bean Cake with Shredded Dried Scallops. If you like beans, you would love this dish. It had a good texture and was filled with and garnished with black-eyed beans all over.

The Deep-fried Dumplings filled with Crabmeat, Shrimps, Dried Bamboo Shoots and Celery was a winner among us. It was so attractively packaged that it looked like a little flower basket with a fried prawn sprouting out from the centre of the dumpling. No wonder the Chinese name of this dish was known as a chrysanthemum flower ball. When we deflowered it, the crispy edges just fell all over our plates.

Another favourite was the Deep-fried Yam Dumplings. Different from the usual wu kok (yam tart), the smooth yam filling was laced with loads of crabmeat, shrimps and fresh scallops. You could also try the Deep-fried Prawn Dumpling which had whole prawns stuffed in it and best eaten with mayonnaise.

In all its novelty, we were disappointed with some of the unusual dishes and would not recommend them unless you wanted to confirm our views.

Though the Baked Pastry with Gluten and Century Eggs did not have any overpowering taste of the century eggs and the filling was made to taste like har siew, it was not an exciting creation. The Pan-fried Black Dace (a type of fish) had very a very thin skin covering a fish paste stuffing with Chinese sausage, black fungus and tangerine peels. It tasted basically like a fish cake stuffing that was a little too chewy.

The Pan-fried Dumpling with minced chicken, shrimps and mint had a pleasant mint taste but overall it felt like eating some mint chewing gum with meat and prawns wrapped by a thick and dry layer of bao (bun) pastry. The Steamed Vegetarian Rolls (chee cheong fun) had unbelievably starchy filling--imagine eating starchy chee cheong fun with starchy mushrooms and vegetables?! Need we say more?
The conclusion? Try the traditional dim sum dishes. The freshness and generosity of the ingredients would not disappoint you--well-marinated pork pieces and chunks of prawns, scallops or crabmeat coupled with good textured pastry. Most of the dim sum dishes are very prettily presented and that enhanced the pleasure of biting into the dim sum pieces. But if you decide on a little adventure for the slightly more creative dishes, try them at your own risk, don't say that we didn't warn you in advance!!

Where:	Man Fu Yuan 2nd level, directly above the Olive Tree restaurant Hotel Inter-Continental 80 Middle Road Bugis Junction Tel: 4311062
Opening Hours:	Lunch 11.30am-2.30pm Dinner 6pm-10.30pm Tel: 4311062
Food Rating:	Excellent