I’m not too fond of restaurants that have a whole container of chopsticks sitting on the table - you never know if they’re clean or not, people could have sneezed on them or anything. We wiped ours with a napkin before using them, and hoped for the best.

I’m always amazed at how many meals (and how quickly) the tiny kitchens in these establishments can churn out, and this was no exception. Our food arrived quickly, but the wrong order. We requested the dumplings first, but they came last. Oh well.

The table (size) was struggling to cope with 2 rice bowls, 3 main dishes, various condiments, a container of chopsticks, a bottle of water and two glasses. But somehow we managed.

Now, for the food:

Shanghai Shao-Long-Bao Dumplings
I was disappointed with these. The soup was boiling hot inside, but the dumplings themselves had cooled somewhat, which was kind of annoying in that you didn’t want to let them get cold but you couldn’t bite into the buggers either. They were also too large to eat in one mouthful, so you’d lose half the soup when you do bite them in half.

The dumpling meat inside tasted ok, but nothing excitingly new or wonderful. Standard ingredients - Pork mince / ginger / garlic / salt / etc.

The dumpling skin itself was thicker (puffed up) than any other dumplings i’ve eaten - quite strange.

I won’t order these again.

Dong-Po Square Soft Pork
I wasn’t overly wrapped with this dish when we had it at Post-Mao, but I liked this one better. The actual fat layer was thinner, and the skin/fat layer broke up easily when chewing. I also liked the taste of the sauce in this one better.

I was also acutely aware most of this dish is pure fat, so I left most of it for Louis to eat.

Dry Chicken with Hot Szechuan Chilli
If you don’t like peanuts, you won’t like this dish. Most of its flavour is drawn from the bare flavour of the deep-fried chicken (the chicken itself doesn’t have much flavour though), the szechuan chillis (of which there are plenty of), and the peanuts. They could have dusted the chicken pieces with a bit of salt, which I think would have enhanced the flavour.

If you order this dish alone, you will finish with your mouth feeling rather dry. The batter is also a bit floury/thick, so the amount of actual chicken used is fairly minimal. That said, I think this would partner well with a dish that has lots of juice or sauce as a nice balance.

I enjoyed the (small amount of) Dong-Po Pork, but the Dry Chicken was average, and the dumplings were sub-par. Maybe they should re-work their specials menu to only include the stuff they actually do well at. Might visit again if we’re running short of places to go.

The restaurant is grubby. At least, that’s how it appears to me. Bright lighting doesn’t do wonders for any eatery and i reckon that’s why most restaurants have dim lights for ambience and also hide all the dirt and stray food pieces. Service-wise, they get back some points for having a really attentive female waiter who looked after every aspect - what to order, how much to order, spoon or chopsticks, water. We didn’t ask for any of these but she took care of them all the same. Now, onwards to the food:

Shanghai Shao-Long-Bao Dumplings:Supposed to be an entree, but arrived later. The price is OK ($6), but the dumplings aren’t great. Like Damien mentioned, the skin is thicker than it should be, and the fillings are nothing to shout about. I have tasted better.

Dong-Po Square Pork: I don’t know why, but i love fatty pork, preferably braised in some sort of reddish soy-based sauce. After Post-Mao, i had such a craving again, which is what prompted me to try out this restaurant in the first place. They do have pork cubes, but under a completely different recipe. Strangely, they charge $5.80 per piece, instead of by the dish. Not cheap, so we ordered just two pieces - me also knowing that Damien does not share my appetite for pork fat. The dish came along and i was pleasantly surprised. It tasted good in its own way and the meat was very tender - simply melts in your mouth. I had already polished off half of my rice on this alone before the next dish even arrived! The flavours were very well infused and the soy-based sauce was delicious. No doubt, this is a dish laden with fat and best eaten in moderation, but i would highly recommend trying it out.

Dry Chicken with Hot Szechuan Chilli: Damien is being too lenient on this dish. Just as the Dong-Po Pork was good, this was abysmal. I was expecting a sauce-based stir-fry along the lines of Kong-Pao Chicken but what comes out is another deep fried chicken with lots of dried chilli pieces. I don’t like having my rice with deep-fried stuff and to make matters worse the (boneless) chicken pieces were mostly batter. I could barely get any meat and in terms of flavoring, there was almost none whatsoever. I would appreciate a little more salt and spice, but most of the flavors relied on the chilli oil and peanuts, which doesn’t exactly cut it.

So what’s the verdict? Not that great, on the whole. I would only go back for the Dong-Po Pork and perhaps some other dishes, but in terms of price, Spicy Fish Restaurant is only affordable (not cheap), and if i had to take gambles with every dish, i would sooner go to another place with better ambience and guaranteed decent food. Business is surprisingly brisk at the Spicy Fish though, so perhaps there is something i am missing out on.

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