How does one tell if a dim sum restaurant is good? By the lineups. There is a lot of dim sum choices around the lower mainland but if it’s good, people are willing to drive across town and wait in the crowded entrance area to get a spot. We only drove across town to Richmond because I wanted to go furniture shopping.
I’ve read great reviews about Rainflower Cafe from other food bloggers so I thought we should give it a try since we were in the hood. Going to Richmond is a rarity for me because I don’t like the traffic, crowd, and vibe there…exception is the food. It was about 1pm when we arrived and the first thing we noticed is the spacious beautiful elegant decor. Next thing I noticed is the uncharacteristically empty tables around; a half full restaurant during prime dim sum time was a sign.
We sat down and started to skim through the dim sum order form. It was mix of traditional and specialty dishes but the variety still seemed lacking.
We started with typical dim sum of meat balls and beef rice rolls. When they arrived, all of us commented that the portions were small. The meat balls were priced as a large dish and for sure…it was not a large dish.
Then we ordered 2 shrimp dishes: shrimp spring rolls and shrimp dumplings. The spring rolls were the size of cigars and underwhelming with just shrimp as the filling. They could have added vegetables like bamboo shoots to bulk it up and give it more texture. The shrimp dumplings were ok but suspiciously tasted like it came out of a Hon’s bag. If it were really fresh dumplings the skin would have a more soft sticky quality to it.
One of their specialties was a unique version of ‘ja leung’ or chinese donut in rice rolls. Their version had fish paste in it. Once again the portions were small and fish paste isn’t that expensive so they could have stuffed that donut even more. The only redeeming dish at this point was the white turnip cake.
Since there were four of us, we decided to order a lunch dish to share: the ‘ma po’ noodles.
‘Ma Po’ is a spicy chilli and bean based sauce usually with minced pork cooked together. The sauce in this noodle had no semblance to the sauce. It had barely any flavours and the noodles weren’t cooked properly. It was so tasteless I couldn’t finish my bowl at all.
What can I say? I’m a dim sum snob and justifiably so….I’ve been going to dim sum since I was born and there was even a point where I went almost every weekend. And did Rainflower Cafe pass my test? Nope.
Rainflower Cafe
3600 #3 Rd Richmond
Browse Timeline
Comments ( 3 )
maybe it’s your excellent photography but the food doesn’t look that bad here. but at the price range you mentioned to me before, it does seem it’s high for what you get -pretty average food. The noodles doesn’t look that appetizing.
liv added these pithy words on
Jul 04 10 at
4:47 pm
Yeah I have to agree with Liv, the pictures of the food make it look really really tasty and appetizing, but to hear that the food wasn’t well-prepared and the flavours were not present, that’s disappointing. Although that last photo of the noodles make it look like day old stringy egg or something. Otherwise, everything else LOOKS good lol, I’m such a sucker for yummy pictures! hope you had a good weekend! xo
Nicole added these pithy words on
Jul 05 10 at
1:04 am
Though the food was not bad when we visited, but having pieces falling from the roof onto your food was pretty horrifying…basically the paint was chipping and the pieces fell into our food and tea…not the greatest sight…LOL!
Buddha Girl added these pithy words on
Oct 27 10 at
5:38 am
