Thursday, October 11, 2007

Canton Palace

I was really looking forward to eating at Canton Palace because Luke had said it was buffet style, and the thought of stuffing myself with all manner of Cantonese goodness just made my stomach happy. Sadly, though, we arrived to find that the buffet was only for the lunch hour; BUT, there was still an all-you-can eat menu where you picked one main dish and however many number of smaller dishes/dim sum you wanted, for 560NT a person.

Our waitress was very nice, offering several recommendations and urging us to order more food, saying that the portions were too small for two people. Though when the food came out, the portions seemed fine to us - except for perhaps the dessert, which were specifically for one person only, so we ordered two of each.


Though there was a ton of food, I would have to say that most of it was just ok. A lot of it reminded me of the sorta-good-if-you're-eating-this-in-Rhode Island variety of Chinese food you might find in the States, but now we're in Taiwan, and it's a whole different ball game. The dim sum foods were acceptable, nothing special. The chow mien was downright bad. Not so bad it was inedible, but the noodles weren't crispy at all, and the sauce had a strangely sweet taste to it.


The one redeeming aspect of the food was the crab. All the crab dishes were very well done - flavorful on the outside shell part, tender on the inside.


I'd say that Canton Palace was a one time deal place for us. I'm glad we had the crab, but I'm not sure I would return even for that, because it's not like it was really spectacular or anything. Oh, and the 560NT all-you-can-eat deal is a promotion that only lasts until the end of the month. It might be worth it to go just for that, but after the promotion ends, I don't think we'd go back.

Canton Palace
located in the Sunworld Dynasty Hotel (next to the IKEA)

Dunhua North Road, No. 100

2 comments:

abstractpoet said...

The Baked Crab with X.O. Sauce (offered as one of the "main courses" you could pick) was off the hook. But the fried pork ribs and the steamed fish were just downright nasty.

Like Emily said, go in October and order crab after crab after crab (as much and in as many different varieties as you want!), and it's a pretty darned good deal.

joanh said...

yeah, isn't it strange? i haven't found a lot of awesome dim sum places here that you think you would find. actually, i've had a lot of really bad dim sum. *sigh