Restoran Pin Ming Xuan (品茗轩广式茶楼), located along Jalan Serigala near to KSL City Mall, is never without a queue whenever I walk past the restaurant. An opportunity arose and I brought a couple of friends to wait it out on a Friday morning — with a 40-minute wait. We just have to try it at least once!
Pin Ming Xuan has 3 outlets in Johor Bahru and the Taman Century outlet, near KSL City Mall, is the flagship. The other two outlets are in Kota Puteri and Horizon Hills.
Pin Ming Xuan is a Cantonese dim sum restaurant with a wide range of authentic, handmade dim sums and cooked dishes — most of the typical dishes that I can think of are on the menu.
We have 9 dishes and a pot of Chinese pu’er tea (普洱茶) to go with.
First dish is Phoenix Feet with PMX Sauce (酱皇蒸凤爪). “Phoenix feet” — an elegant name for chicken feet — has always been my favourite dim sum dish and I will always order it. The simmered phoenix feet is delicious and not salty — “PMX Sauce” is Pin Ming Xuan’s special sauce.
The “Open-Mouth” Steamed Char Siew Bun (秘制开口叉烧包) has very soft and fluffy skin with nicely-flavoured meat filling and mellow sweetness. The Shanghai Soup Dumplings (小笼包) have thin skins with fresh meat and lightly-flavoured soup within. It is best to go with vinegar and ginger shreds. The Hong Kong-style Cheong Fun Rolls (叉烧肠粉) are wrapped with char siew meat, topped with white sesame seeds and drenched with savoury sauce. It is light-tasting with nice flavours and not salty.
The Shrimp Siew Mai (蚧子烧卖皇), or steamed shrimp dumplings, have fresh and crunchy prawns topped with shrimp roes. They are meaty, crunchy and really nice texture.
The Pan-Fried Chives Dumplings (香煎韭菜锅贴) with crispy fried bottoms have juicy meat and distinct flavour of chives. The Hakka-style Stuffed Egg-Plant (酿茄子), stuffed with fish paste, are lightly fried and dribbled with tasty sauce. The eggplants are well-fried, not mushy, and tasty.
The Simmered Skin Roll in Fresh Soup (上汤鲜竹卷) is one dish that is a first for us. The “skin rolls” are shrimp fillings wrapped in beancurd skin and served in savoury soup instead of steamed. Soak in the soup, the skins have additional flavour of the soup. Nice!
The Stir-Fried Radish Cake (特色炒萝卜糕) uses cuts of radish cake to stir-fry with eggs and, bean sprouts using a special sauce. It has a nice wok aroma with crispy radish cake and egg. Of all the 9 dishes, this is the only dish without meat and it was quite large in portion.
To sum it up, the dishes that we tried are nice and nothing to pick about. I will be back for more of Pin Ming Xuan’s dim sum on another weekday when there are lesser people and probably arrive much earlier in the morning.
Social Media:
Facebook | Website
Address:
10, Jalan Serigala, Taman Abad, 80250 Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia
Opening Hours:
8am to 4pm (Fri ~ Mon starts at 7:30am) | Daily
How to Get There:
From JB Sentral, take BAS.MY J100 to KSL City Mall. Read JB Bus: To KSL City Mall in Taman Century.
Nearby:
More @ Taman Century:
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