We (threesome) arrived at the restaurant shortly after it’s opening time of 10:00 am - their first dine-in customers of the day (not unusual for us early-lunch diners!). We were welcomed in, and shown to one of the booth tables alongside the front window.
Menus, napkins, and chopsticks were already in place, a jug of ice water, pot of hot tea and mugs, were brought promptly. It’s a large and varied menu of offerings, but I had researched it via their website beforehand, and had made notes of potential choices. This sure helped. I checked what I had brought against the menu, jotted down item numbers, and relayed each to our server — she confirmed each against the menu, to ensure we were in sync, and then put each into her portable touch screen relay to the kitchen. Service from kitchen to table was rather prompt and steady, though the sequence of dishes was a little odd, with some main dishes arriving first, before appetizers and dim sum dishes. There was no service to our table after all dishes ordered had arrived, until we requested our bill (and a couple of cartons to take home some leftovers), from another server passing near our table. No stops in-between, from our original server, to check on how everything was going, or if anything else was needed, etc.
What was ordered: Note: I’ve named dishes as per listings in the restaurant’s dine-in menu, and/or the itemized ‘check slips’ left at our table.
- Appetizers: famous meat ball (must admit, wondered what had been ordered when this dish arrived! it was described as a meat ball dumpling in the menu - at first, I thought it was just a large bowl of sauce, maybe to be used with the potstickers - it looked like a big blob of jelly - but the jelly (which looked and tasted a little like very soft beef tendon), laid over some pieces of very tender meat, mushrooms, and such - it tasted rather sweet) — deep-fried squid tentacles (ordered for daughter and I, preparation was a touch disappointing - though quite tender, I felt the rather delicate flavour of squid (and we know and really enjoy the tentacles), was spoiled with the use of strong-tasting herbs and seasonings).
- Dim Sum: pork cake roll (it looked fine, but the preparation was rather cool, tasteless, and dry) — pork potstickers (a good-sized serving - coverings were thick, inside ingredients, light in amount, and over-seasoned) — sticky rice dumplings (new-to-us - they looked rather ‘cute’, and were a fun to see and eat treat - wrappers were thin, ingredients flavourful and tasty).
- Noodle/Stir-fried noodles: preserved cabbage w/shredded pork fried rice cake (a bit of a surprise, based on the picture in the menu, which indicated veggie, meat, and rice cake ‘rolls’) - it was a decent presentation, and the preparation of rice cakes, veggie ‘flakes’, small pieces of pork, were lightly-seasoned, and quite nicely-prepared, and definitely not overcooked).
- Fusion stir fried: fried green bean w/pork (no surprises in the preparation - tasty and flavourful preparation, but a little oily) — spicy griddle prawns (a lovely, colourful presentation, but it was definitely a spicy, hot preparation! - great for daughter, a touch hot for my lady and I (= my fault, the menu said spicy, I should have asked our server ‘how spicy’ before ordering) - the dish was well-prepared, prawns moist and flavourful, we (my lady & I) just tried to avoid the hot peppers and seasonings when digging out and enjoying the prawns, while daughter really enjoyed everything, and was able to take home the “hot salad portion” we could not handle.
Overall, MYST offered up a large, very modern, neat, and attractive venue for a recent lunch dining experience. It was fun to see, and interesting to experience. Would the food draw us back? No, I do not think so — maybe that has something to do with our lack of knowledge and experience with “fusion”, but for my lady and I, most flavours and tastes were just too ’strong & up front’ for our liking.
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