No Lightbulb Moments Here

It's been around for a long time, but it's taken me this long to write about it.

Why is this dim sum joint so popular? People jostle for tables and ask to share seats. Why? The best thing I can say about Key Hiong is that the food is hot. Other than that, across the board, all the items we tried were pretty entry level.

The paus are pretty good, but they're not made in-house.

My dim sum chef friends tell me that the two items that set the benchmark for dim sum items are the charsiew pau and the prawn dumplings. The selection of pau I had was pretty good. The charsiew filling was moist, relatively generous and just sweet enough to set off the dough. The bread was also fluffy enough and not tackily sticky as some paus are wont to be. However, the paus are all delivered frozen, and just popped into the steamer. Definitely not home made.

The tai pau had nice, moist filling, with the pork chunks retaining its tenderness. The red bean pau was a bit stodgy, with the filling clumping up.

The prawn dumplings had a terrible chewy exterior. The rice flour wrap felt as is it had been heated, cooled and then re-steamed. There was a layer of damp slime on the underside of the wrap, and the prawns were overly coated with flour. Fail!

Uninspiring is an understatement, for these prawn dumplings.

While the siew mai was acceptable, there was a feeling of over-processed meat about them that left a plaquey film on my teeth. If you slather them with sweet sauce, you can pretend to ignore the sensation, but why should I?

Industrial, and it shows.

The fried prawns with mayonnaise were quite plump specimens, but the coating was way too heavy and it soaked in the oil they were fried in, resulting in a very sickening mouthful of spuring oil when the parcels were bitten into. The batter also lacked any taste profile. There was barely a hint of salt, which left the mayo to do all the work. And it wasn't even a better class of commercial mayonnaise.

Oil-soaked prawns, anyone?

The best part of the meal was probably the loh mai kai (glutinous rice with pork). The rice was the correct consistency - not grainy, but not a lump of starch - and the saucing was good, with hints of ginger, pepper and garlic. Even the sliced pork was tender. Still, again, it is not made in-house.

I guess this means when it comes to dim sum you really need to pay for the good stuff. And I have yet to find somewhere other than Dynasty Dragon that I'd like to dine at regularly for dim sum.

Key Hiong Dim Sum 
21 Jalan SS24/8
Taman Megah
47301 Petaling Jaya