Si Chuan Dou Hua, the Parkroyal hotel's Sichuan-&-Cantonese restaurant, serves an all-you-can-eat menu for lunch & dinner everyday (except public holidays) at a relatively economical _ but not necessarily rewarding _ RM55++ per person.
Customers can order from a roughly 60-dish selection that looks promising on paper, featuring plenty of prawns, served steamed ...
... or deep-fried in kataifi-inspired pastry ...
... or with cashews & chili. Each ends up being less than memorable though, whipped up with competence but little complexity or flair.
Prawns in garlic sauce, battered with wasabi mayo & deep-fried with spicy salt, mainly examples of irrefutable quantity over irresistible quality.
Roast chicken. Patrons should probably request dark meat, since the breast & wings provided here border dangerously on dryness.
Chicken braised with black mushrooms, deep-fried with butter & with lemon sauce. To be fair, it's difficult to find deals elsewhere that stretch RM55++ this far.
Fish of the evening, with hot bean sauce. Could have been fresher & less muddy-tasting.
Stir-fried beef (a bit mushy in parts) & bean curd all succeed in stuffing the stomach.
Skip the xiao long bao, cursed by the thickest skin we've ever seen.
Soup's up: Eight-treasure with slivers of seafood is worthwhile, while the dumpling soup isn't.
Seasoned baby octopus & ginger-sauce mushrooms. Service could be more cheerful; also note that dishes can sometimes take a lengthy time (up to half-an-hour) to emerge from the kitchen.
Marinated spicy chilled cucumber & stir-fried vegetables with garlic.
Crispy noodles with shredded chicken. Enjoyable enough, this one.
Dan Dan Noodles, sufficiently flavorful. Perhaps it might be prudent to return someday to sample Si Chuan Dou Hua's regular a la carte menu instead; that would probably prove more satisfying.
Watermelon & honeydew, Chinese pancakes (too doughy), bean curd with wolf berries, longan with inexplicably nonexistent lotus seeds (served sadly at room temperature instead of cold).
Fortune cookies can be fun, even when they spout nonsense like "You have a potential urge and the ability for accomplishment."
Be warned that tea costs an extra RM7++ per person, separate from the RM55++ for the food. It's tasty tea nevertheless, served with stylish showiness.
Si Chuan Dou Hua
Parkroyal Hotel, Jalan Sultan Ismail, Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03-2782-8303
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