Tai Ping Chinese Cuisine @ The Royale Chulan

On Day 3, we had a hair workshop with Winnie Loo from A Cut Above. Basically, we were taught how to style our hair and what hairdo suits what occasion. I don’t want to bore you with the details, but they gave me soft curls.Instead of the lunch buffet, we had Chinese food which was surprisingly quite good. I thought going for food reviews with bloggers was all the ‘fighting’ I had to do when I take pictures of food. But many of the girls wanted to photograph the food too. I have no clue why they wanted to do so, because they don’t even blog about food/post food pictures in the pageant blogs. o_0The Oriental Hot and Cold Combination was a lot tastier than the one they served during rif’s sister’s wedding. My conclusion is that they can’t handle cooking for large crowd without compromising on the taste. Double boiled snow fungus with chicken soup was nothing to shout about. Truth be told, I didn’t think this tasted ‘double-boiled’. The flavour of the broth was not concentrated enough.Although ordinary, I liked the roasted five spice chicken with prawn crackers — crispy skin, tender flesh and lightly seasoned with five-spice powder. Some of the girls were put off by the pink centre, but I didn’t mind it one bit. Steamed fish fillet was forgettable. I couldn’t tell what fish it was, but it has a coarser texture and didn’t absorb the flavour of the gravy properly.

By this point, I was starting to get annoyed with questions like, “Is the fish nice? Why isn’t it nice? What did the chef do wrong?” I was half-tempted to stick my chopsticks into the questioner’s throat. If you’re THAT gung ho about fighting with me to take food pictures, you should at least know how to describe it. Or decide for yourself if it’s nice or not.Braised Tau Kan with Trio Mushroom and Green Vegetable was a tad too starchy for my liking. The combination of flavours was quite good, but the slightly thick gravy knocked a few points off this dish. I was delighted when I spotted plump prawns in the Fried Rice with Salted Fish. But not so delighted when I was told by the organisers that we were late and had to stop eating. Nonetheless, it didn’t stop me from taking a few spoons of rice. Heck, I even managed to steal a few sips of warm red bean cream soup, which I thought was was way too pureed. I like a bit of texture in my ‘tong sui’. After lunch, we had a make-up workshop, where some of the girls (myself included) accidentally fell asleep from too much lunch. But by 6pm, I was hungry again.

Charlene & I

Ambiance: 7/10
Food: 6/10 (halal)
Price: N/A
Verdict: Pretty good halal Chinese food.