HML Seafood Restaurant- Inexpensive Dim Sum and No Tea Charge

HML Seafood Restaurant is located on No.3 Road and Westminster in Richmond. It is on the second floor and the main entrance is through a parking lot.

It’s a fairly large and spacious restaurant so I have never had to wait more than 30 seconds for a table. If you don’t like line-ups when it comes to dim sum restaurants, this place is for you.

My family enjoys this restaurant because it’s pretty cheap and the dim sum is good. You get 20% off all dim sum items as well as free tea (other dim sum places normally charge you $1 per person for tea) everyday.

We were seated near the window and this is the view from our table. Not very pretty, but hey it gave me great sunlight to take pictures with. :P

First came the Country Fried Vermicelli ($6.80). There were barely any toppings and lacked flavour of any kind. I would not get this ever again.

The Rice Roll with Dried Shrimp ($4.95) was amazing. It is a very simple dish, probably the most simple rice roll dish on the menu, but it was executed wonderfully.

There were good amounts of green onion and dried shrimp, and the rice roll tasted freshly made. I especially love it with soy sauce and XO sauce.

Oh speaking of XO sauce, I asked a waiter if there was a charge for XO sauce and he said yes. He said it was $3.50 (in which I thought, holy smokes are you kidding?!) so I just said no thank you. Three minutes later and out of the blue, he came by our table with a side of XO sauce and said it was on the house! I still have no clue why he gave it to us for free but nevertheless I was so happy. :D Thanks waiter!

This is the Pork Dumpling with Vegetables ($3.95). It comes in threes and it tasted alright. However, it was nowhere near as bad as the shrimp dumpling I had at Victoria Chinese Restaurant (post here).

I quite liked the Steamed Turnip Cake ($3.95). This is a healthier version of ‘XO stir fried Turnip cake’ that we usually see in other dim sum restaurants.  Just add some XO sauce to this steamed version and voila! Just as good.

Baked BBQ Pork Buns ($3.95) is one of my favourite dim sum dishes and it is SO frickin delicious if it is done right (see Vivacity post for deliciousness). This one unfortunately was a big fail.

The measly BBQ pork filling was bad and lacklustre to say the least, the bun was too thin and not pillowy, and the Mexican sweet crust was wayyy too sweet.

If you know me, you know that I love my tendons. Haha. This Beef Tendon ($4.25) was delicious and flavourful. 

I didn’t try the Steamed Beef Balls ($3.95) because I was never a fan of the vinegary sour taste. My dad seemed to enjoy this though.

Total damage. Notice the tea was free and they gave us 20% off on the bottom. This restaurant is pretty good if you are looking for cheap dim sum at a non-sketchy or dirty place.

Based on these reasons:

•  inexpensive and pretty good quality dim sum
• free parking in the parking lot
• service isn't that great

Service Rating: 2.5/5

Food Rating: 3/5

Price: $$

Overall Rating: 3/5

Happy Eating!

courtesy of http://blog.girlybubble.com/2011/09/07/user-links-cute-dim-sum/