Imperial Treasure Nan Bei Restaurant II – Dinner

I revisited Imperial Treasure Nan Bei today as I was looking for some where to settle a casual chinese dinner. Having remembered that Imperial Treasure Nan Bei serves a wide variety of food that tasted alright, I went ahead with the reservations.

Koropok was served as an appetiser. I’m not sure if this comes as a package together with the peking duck or is it just an appetiser served to all.

Peking Duck – $50.00++

Based on this duck, I can safely say that the $88 duck from Paradise Pavilion is really not just the usual duck. Today’s duck is just a usual peking duck. The fact that they could bring out the duck within 5 minutes of ordering it shows it’s been roasted since long ago, and not made to order like Paradise Pavilion’s where the duck has to be roasted for only 50min and brought out to serve piping hot. The skin was crispy and all but nothing too memorable. The meat wasn’t tender and unusual like Royal China or Paradise Pavilion, but more like the usual roast duck texture. The fats tasted like normal fats (no foie gras taste!). We had the meat on its own.

The duck was also significantly smaller than Paradise Pavilion. They took the skin from almost every part of the duck but it only managed to fill up 15 of these crepes. The served wrapped it for us. Like Royal China, the crepe was of the eggless variation.

The size of the duck was similar to that from Royal China, but of course, cheaper and not as good. For Peking duck, based on price and taste I think Royal China is an all rounder!

I think for this meal, the most unimpressive dish would be the Peking Duck.

Carrot (red and green) soup – $20.00++/pot

The soup was very very tasty! I loved it.

They separated the ingredients from the soup into a plate and served it to us.

Xiao Long Bao – $4.00++/4

Despite looking distorted (they should really brush up on the appearance of the xiao long bao), it was tasty and full of soup. My 2^nd favourite, behind Paradise Dynasty.

Eggplant with minced meat – $11.00++

This dish was very tasty and I loved it! I love eggplant in general. The meat was rather salty however.

Fried fish – $8.00++

I usually do not like fried fish but this one proved to be different. The fried skin wasn’t too hard, unlike typical malay fried fish you get everywhere, and it was actually thin, brittle and crispy. It wasn’t too oily either. The fish inside wasn’t overcooked at all. It was very soft, tender and tasty. I would recommend this dish! I don’t remember the exact name of this dish though.

Seafood ee noodles – $12.80++

Of course the whole portion was much more than this. There was fish (looks like cod), scallop and prawns in the noodles. I am not a fan of such noodles but this one was quite good. They didn’t use too much black sauce (I hate) and it was tasty. I only had two mouths of this so I can’t describe more.

Deep fried glutinous rice ball with black sesame filling – $4.80++/4

Having tried a similar dish at Shang Palace and loving it, I had to try this. The ball was fried crispy on the outside but surprisingly wasn’t oily nor had any sick oily taste.