Dimsum All You Can at Kung Fu Kitchen, The District Imus

Strolling around The District Mall, Imus in the afternoon of Chinese New Year, the hubby and I passed by Kung Fu Kitchen which, at that time, was having a promo – Dimsum All You Can at P298 per head. (If you’ve been following this blog, you may have known by now that I love Chinese food!) I attended the opening of Kung Fu Kitchen - SM City Manila before and from what I remember they serve good Chinese food at affordable prices. So I asked the hubby if we could give this unlimited dimsum offer a try, to which he agreed without hesitation. And so our dimsum adventure began.


smiling and hoping for the best with this dimsum all you can offer

The dimsum all you can turned out to be our early dinner. By the way, as per the photo of the promo board below, it’s served from Monday to Thursday (the promo poster seen from the outside of the restaurant says it’s served from Monday to Saturday, though), between 2:30 pm to 6:00 p.m and with additional 10% service charge. If I’m not mistaken, we went inside the restaurant at past 5:00 pm already.



Since there were a lot of options, we only ordered some familiar items and a few more which sounded interesting to us. Below are the items that landed on our table (in order of appearance):




clockwise: pinsec frito, radish cake, lumpiang shanghai


bola pao and beancurd roll


clockwise: Yang Chow fried rice, hot chicken salad, stir-fried noodles and pork siomai


Yang Chow fried rice, steamed brown rice with pork and shrimps and stir-fried noodles

Our top favorites were the pinsec frito, pork siomai, lumpiang shanghai, beancurd roll and stir-fried noodles (the hubby said this was too salty for his liking but for me the saltiness was just right). Their pinsec frito were still as good as ever: crispy and tasty deep-fried dumplings which had a good meat-fat-wrapper-oil ratio.

The Yang Chow fried rice and the steamed brown rice with pork and shrimps were okay, too. The hot chicken salad was forgettable while the bola pao hit the spot. We appreciated the fact that all our food came straight from the kitchen so they really arrived on our table steaming hot. Yes, not “cold” like when we had unlimited dimsum at The Original Salido Restaurant.

Out of the 20 items on offer, we got to try 14 and mostly one serving for each item only. That was because most of our re-orders fell on deaf ears (of the waiters we talked to). Like when we would try to re-order, we had to talk to at least two waiters and make a follow-up with two more before they would serve us more food. Eventually, we got tired of re-ordering because from the 14 items we re-ordered, we only got about 6. Frustrating, right? And that said a lot about their service.

When it was time to have desserts for us, we asked for buchi and mango sago only to be served with just the mango sago, and that’s after a 15-minute waiting time and two follow-ups with two different waiters and the guy who looked like the manager of the resto (he was not wearing a uniform and was staying behind the counter most of the time). By that time, we lost our patience completely and asked for the bill immediately so we could get out of the resto ASAP.

During our visit, only a few tables (4 tables the most) were occupied, so I really wondered what went wrong. It seemed like there was a communication problem between the waiters and the kitchen staff. They should look into it to improve their overall service. Sayang kasi ang sarap pa naman ng karamihan sa food nila!

Kung Fu Kitchen
G/L The District Mall
Imus City, Cavite

0917-6247749


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Binond Food Trip: Unlimited Dimsum at The Original Salido Restaurant

A few weeks before the Chinese New Year, the hubby and I were able to visit Binondo again for a food trip. This time around, we were armed with two Cash Cash Pinoy vouchers (worth P299 each) that entitled us to unlimited dimsum + drinks and desserts (originally valued at P600) at The Original Salido Restaurant on Ongpin St. It was a dimsum-filled afternoon that we half-heartedly enjoyed. Read on to know why.



Here are the nine (9) kinds of dimsum featured in the unlimited dimsum promo of Salido:


Beancurd Rolls


Pork Siomai


Sharksfin Dumplings


Hakaw (soggy wrapper, overcooked shrimps)


Pork Spareribs with Tausi


Japanese Siomai


Chicken Feet


Chicken something (sorry, I didn't get the name)


Fish and Kani something (this one tasted old and fishy!)

I will get straight to the point here. What made us disappointed about our dining experience was the fact that our orders were served to us cold. Like they stayed in their bamboo steamer baskets for hours without steaming or some heat to keep them warm. We came at around 2:30 pm and it was hard not to entertain the idea that the dimsum we were feasting on could just be left overs from the batch served to the other diners who arrived before us. Too bad because I even posted a photo in my Instagram account sharing my excitement upon seeing (meaning, not yet tasting) the baskets of dimsum laid out on our table one after the other!

Salido interiors

But still, we ate the cold dimsum and hoped for the best in the taste department. We even ordered Yang Chow fried rice to go with everything. (I have high praises for it because it was tasty and not oily at all. ) Among the dimsum we tried, the hubby and I favored their two kinds of siomai (pork and Japanese), the bean curd roll and the chicken feet (which I ate alone as the hubby doesn’t eat chicken feet). The rest were just so-so and tasted nothing special primarily because they didn’t have any sense of warmth in them (they were served to us cold, remember?).

Another thing that made our dining experience not so pleasant was the service. We had a hard time getting the waiters’ attention. When it was also time to order more dimsum, the waiter that got our re-orders returned to our table initially with nothing. Like all the dimsum supply in the kitchen suddenly ran out. But it seemed that wasn’t the case (buti na lang kundi umuwi na talaga kami agad, agad!). The waiter informed us some of the dimsum were already not available and the ones that were available were still being cooked in the kitchen.

Soon enough, our re-orders of pork siomai and beancurd roll came to our table steaming hot! At least, out of the four kinds we re-ordered, we were still served with two, and they were hot not cold. Amazing. Haha.


the hubby and I

What I realized after this dining “incident” was that not all dining experiences and dining promos (courtesy of Groupon sites), for that matter, are equal. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t. To lessen your disappointment, you just think of happy thoughts. Like how you enjoyed the company of the people you ate with, or how you got to the restaurant safe and got home safe as well. At the end of the day, there are still many restaurants (and a lot more still in their conceptualization phase opening sooner or later) waiting for you to try them out.

If you'll ask me if I'd eat again at The Original Salido Restaurant, I think I might. I'm a self-confessed Chinese food lover, after all. But if ever I'd dine there again, I'll make sure to order straight from the menu without availing of any of their promos. :)

The Original Salido Restaurant
839 Ongpin St.
Binondo, Manila

(+632) 521-3333


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