CANTONESE RESTAURANT at
BROTHER HOTEL, 2-3 FL
255 Nanjing East Road, Sec. 3
(02)2712-3456
website: brotherhotel.com.tw/eDining.htm English, Chinese and Japanese available
hours: 9 AM - 9:30 PM
$$
Kid friendliness: high chairs and toddler plates/utensils avail. lots of finger foods!
Visit reviewed: 2/18/2008
Yum, yum dim sum!! Finally, some awesome and tasty dim sum in Taipei. I've had many disappointing and expensive experiences. Brother Hotel's Cantonese restaurant just makes it look easy by doing the basics (har gow, siu mai, cha sau bao, shrimp chang fun) well and presenting a large variety of other choices. They also offer non-dim sum Cantonese dishes if you are looking for other vegetables or dishes to round out your meal.
For those of you not familiar with dim sum, it's basically lots of small dishes of bite sized eats to share- in all sorts of ways- wrapped, steamed, fried with little sauces to dip in at your choice. Consider it as tapas done Hong Kong style or the perfect snack foods any time of day. It's popular to go weekends brunch in LA with your family, where you'll wait in endless lines at the more popular spots- but Brother Hotel offers dim sum all day through the night (NT$80 - $180) and makes it easy with menus with pictures in English, Chinese and Japanese as well as the carts rolling by the tables (which quite a few of the dim sum places don't even have anymore).
Everything tasted fresh, crispy, meaty, shrimpy, tasty and just right- a place that I would take my relatives, friends, business meetings or even a date- especially in contrast to eating at another popular dim sum place just yesterday (which was packed but had very AVERAGE dim sum). The flavors and textures were just spot on to what each thing was supposed to taste like.
I like to try the almond tofu/jello where ever I see it on the menu, and this place served it nice and cold and firm with a bit of canned fruit. It was a sweet and refreshing end to the meal.
14 comments:
Have you tried their buffet breakfast,lunch or dinner in the Rose Room on 13th floor? Very good IMO. There is also a Teppan room on the same floor but I have never tried.
hi ron: no.. that was my first and only experience at Brother hotel, but good to know about the Rose Room.. is it chinese buffet or western or both?
Both, mostly Chinese thou. Carved roasted beef is my favorite there.
Bad dim sum in Taipei seems so odd to me. The Taiwanese and Chinese are so opinionated about dim sum that I can't see a crappy dim sum place lasting long.
ron wu: mmm, carved roast beef? sounds like it's worth checking out.
chubbypanda: I know!! That's why I was equally surprised.. then again, I had bad Peking Duck in Beijing, though it was at a overpriced hotel restaurant.
My wife and mother-in-law are very picky about their dim sum. They got a recommendation to try the dim sum at Brother Hotel. A couple of samples later and they arranged to have our "Bride Returns Home" lunch there.
We've gone back again on our two return trips to Taipei.
The key to the dim sum is the lack of grease. My wife will trek across San Francisco Bay to visit the one restaurant that is "grease-free".
pterrell: thanks for the comment!! i'm glad that it's not just me...
I have had dim sum, but never like this!!! Oh, I am envious. Ooh, it all looks so good. Which was your favorite thing served?
cakespy: hmm, everything was pretty even. i always like almond tofu! the siu mai and the cha sau siu were good
yummy. i am going to brother for dim sum...
has anyone tried Olympia at ChungHsiao Road?
http://www.igougo.com/attractions-reviews-b93622-Taipei-Olympia.html
wooo you leave my mouth watery...
I wish I can taste them all!
I first had dim sum at the Brother some 10-15 odd years ago. To this day it's the best I've ever had. Looks like they've kept things up since then!
Thanks so much for recommending this place! My squeeze and I have been craving good dim sum since we came here in April. We went there tonight and were very pleased! Your blog is so helpful!!
I took my parents here on your recommendation. We are from Vancouver so we are used to great service and quality dim sum. Keep in mind I only speak a bit of mandarin.
The food was ok. I had to ask the servers for tea several times before they would provide us the pot. Usually Taiwanese restaurants and people are patient, but these servers seemed to have no motivation to give decent customer service. I had to get up and ask more than one person to order and follow up on our food order. They even had a young kid, who started laughing at me and talking with his colleague because probably because of my mandarin. I tried my best to ignore this, but it was the first time I've experience this in Taiwan.
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