Ipoh Food Review: Foh San Restaurant

Makan-makan trip! Here we come! The long waited weekend to Penang to attend my dearest friends’ wedding! :) But before that, here's food review during our pit-stop to Penang.

Food Review: Dim Sum Lunch in Foh San Restaurant, Ipoh

Picture showing the old Foh San

Armed with online research, we headed down to Ipoh to look for the famous dim sum restaurant, Foh San. We were misled by the map online (as shown below) which led us to the old location.
However, the new location is just over the main road. The building was exactly like the picture – a four-storey high open-aired building with generous floor to floor height to create a grandeur feel.
Reaching at noon, we managed to get some bites with a number of items out of stock. Oh well, most of the tables were occupied but we were lucky to get an empty table immediately. (Going late has it benefits. ;) )

We ordered our poh leh tea and waited for them to serve us the dishes. We got a plate of 3 char siu pau (BBQ pork bun) which was tasty and fresh. I find it okay as the pau was not dry and still fluffy. :) See... too hungry till we forgot to take a picture of the pau.

Then we got our first fried dish: “salad prawn”/ shrimp rolls. It was still hot; showing that it was just fried. On the first bite, the crunchiness of the newly-fried skin with the juiciness of the fresh prawn inside was delicious to my tastebuds. It was the “freshest” salad prawn I have eaten. Most of the “salad prawns” in Klang valley are cold from being left out too long and dry. This dish still had the prawn’s juiciness mixed with the crispy fried skin. Good selection at first bite!

The white sauce accompanying this dish looks a bit more yellowish than the normal mayonnaise served by most restaurants. I wonder if it is mixed with something else but I didn’t linger long to taste it .. next dish!

We ordered our dim sum : siu mai, har kau, braised chicken leg and a few others I don’t know the name! We also ordered 2 plates of chee cheong fun to share out.

Being rather hungry, I have to admit I didn’t really savour the next few dishes. Ha! But the siu mai is not so dry and the portion is just nice for me. Too bad there was no dark sweet sauce (normally found in KL) to dip my siu mai. Siu mai is a dim sum made from pork.

I find the har kau (prawn dim sum) not as delicious as I expected. The prawn in the salad prawn was tastier. The skin was not too thick or thin – just nice but as I am not apt with chopsticks (boo-hoo), I still drop out the prawns from the thin translucent skin! Need more practice!
Oh yes, on a side note I love seafood! Hence I usually choose the prawn-type dim sum! :)

The chicken leg was okay… no complains but I never expected to eat more in Penang later! (Wait for next review!) Sorry blur picture!

Chee cheong fun was served with a little of veggie (Arghh what is this veggie call? I’m not a fan of veggies) I find this dish so-so as the “skin” was not very thin and there was not enough sauce. Hence, the dish was rather plain, dry and not tasty! Not really my style. The “belacan” served with it was just okay. I prefer my chee cheong fun to swim in the sauce with more dried prawn belacan and thinner “skin”. I still think it should be delicate and not a mouthful! (I still miss the chee cheong fun in the food court in Yaohan, KL many years back. The skin is thin yet strong enough to hold the prawns within its folds)

We wanted to order loh mai kai but were told it was finished. Then we ordered a bowl of century-egg-porridge and a bowl of fish porridge. Then we waited and waited… the guy didn’t even have the courtesy to come back and tell us it was also finished. Sigh… less crowd but mediocre service. Oh well… it gave us time to digest and had another pot of tea before our dessert next stop.

Other dim sum we ate (which names I can't remember now)

Foh San Dim Sum Restaurant (new location in blue)
51, Jalan Leong Sin Nam, 30300 Ipoh, Perak.

Tel. No : 605-254 0308.
If my review is not detailed enough: do check out Motormouth's. I only found their review after I came back from Ipoh. Looking through it, makes me want to try the other food in Ipoh!