Shanghainese & Cantonese Cuisine at Xia Mian Guan Sunway Pyramid PJ - Best Restaurant To Eat

Talk about Chinese food, there are many choices in town that serves various types of Chinese food, At Xia Mian Guan located OB.K7, Ground Floor, Oasis Boulevard, Sunway Pyramid Shopping Mall, No. 3, Jalan PJS 11/15, Petaling Jaya, Bandar Sunway, it is a new restaurant that serves its version of Shanghainese and Cantonese Cuisine.

The restaurant opened business for in March 2013 in Sunway Pyramid. The ambience and décor is elegant and service were very prompt and efficient.

We sample a few of their Chef signature dishes which I will be highlighting as below. First on the table were appetiser dishes.

Caesar Salad With Crispy Soft Shell Crab. Normally, you would not expect to be served salad in a Chinese Restaurant, more so the Caesar Salad serves here come with Soft Shell crab. Most others will be served with Roasted Chicken or with Bacon Chips.

The sauce accompanied with the salad is a concoction of the mayonnaise sauce and also a concoction of sesame sauce according to the manager. To my surprise, it is quite refreshing with the mixture of boiled eggs and crunchy fresh garden vegetables that goes into this salad dish. Although a little pricier, it is a refreshing start to a Chinese meal.

Price: RM 48.00
Rating : 3 of 5

This Crispy beancurd skin is a very unique dish. Normally bean curd skin filling is either using pork meat with prawns of just fish paste. At Xia Mian Guan, the chef have a different filling recipe.

My first guess, when I took a bite was they were using radish or turnip but a check with the chef, boy was I in for a great surprised, it was a combination of 3 types of mushroom (Black (shitake) mushroom, Enoki Mushroom and Chicken Thigh Mushroom (Oyster mushroom) cut to very thin strips.

What a pleasant surprise and indeed innovative way to prepare crispy bean curd skin.

Price: RM 12.00/8 pcs
Rating : 4 of 5

Different chef have their secret recipe when preparing pork ribs. There is a tendency that the meat of pork rib will be firm and tough. The challenge is therefore to ensure that the right marinate, flavours and timing becomes critical.

I would say that these Deep Fried Spare Ribs Red Wine Sauce ribs were very well marinated. When the dish was serves to us, we could see the glaring shine of the meat and the well covered marinate around the pork ribs. Taking the first bite, the texture was firm and the taste flavourful.

The ribs tasted even better than it looked. Fried to perfection, with the strong Red Wine sauce glaze wakes up our taste buds. The meat was superbly tender too. Can’t help myself to a second and a third helping.

Price: RM 16.00 per ribs
Rating : 4 of 5

At most restaurant bean curd used are usually the one that are purchased from the market. You can order either the normal ones (white) or the Japanese type (yellow). But, at Xia Mian Guan, the chef goes thru a tedious process to prepare these beancurd. These beancurd are prepared fresh everyday.

From the soya bean, it is blended and strain out the juices. The strained juice are then cooked and then added into the tray which, the chef have put in finely chopped spinach at the bottom. The result is the Imperial BeanCurd.

The Imperial Bean Curd can be cooked with a variety of style, but the one that I am previewing here is the Braised Imperial Bean Curd with Crab Meat. The bean curd was very soft and smooth. Couple with the Crab Meat sauce, it really blended very well with the bean curd. This dish is excellent complimentary to white rice.

Price: RM 20.00
Rating : 3 of 5

Many restaurant serves Farm Chicken as a Poached Style with Kai Lan. Here we had the opportunity to try a specially smoked version i.e. Smoked Farm Chicken with Pu Er Tea Leaves. I had the opportunity to prepare Smoked Eggs with tea leaves during my trip to Taiwan and this dish reminds me of the wonderful taste of those eggs and with that taste lingering over me, it will be the benchmark to compare.

When the dish came, I took the chicken thigh, the first impression was the smoky taste followed by the strong Pu Er leaves taste. It was very much stronger than when I did with the eggs, For those, not a tea lover, you will find it a tad bit of bitter tea. I believe the chef have used quite a lot of tea leaves.

The taste is inclined to a bit of saltiness too and make a pleasant dish eaten with white rice. If you have eaten paper wrap salt chicken, you will find this dish similar to that but with a strong taste to Pu Er Tea.

Price: RM36.00 per half bird
Rating : 3 of 5