Bobby L.
Yelp
Avoid, avoid, avoid! What a frickin' disaster. You would think that a franchised location of a famed Michelin one-star restaurant would be able to make a basic dim sum meal, but that was very much not the case at this Taipei location.
My dining party and I ordered a myriad of dishes on the menu. The most glaring problems came from the har gow (shrimp dumpling, 晶瑩鮮蝦餃), pan-fried turnip cake (香煎臘味蘿蔔糕), and the zhaliang (Chinese fried donut wrapped in a rice noodle, 炸兩).
The har gow was over steamed, unsalted, and tasted like it was stuffed with frozen shrimp. The result was pure mush.
The pan-fried turnip cake contained zero dried shrimp, no Chinese sausage, and no mushrooms. It consisted basically cornstarch and large chunks of Chinese turnip. The exterior of the cake barely had any of the golden brown charring, the hallmark of pan frying. The result was an inedible mush with zero taste.
Finally, the zhaliang was old and overdone. There's a Cantonese term that translates into English as: "older than your mother," which is apt to use in this situation. The Chinese fried donut was hard as a rock and stale, indicating it was either old and/or left out for an extended amount of time. The rice noodle was complete mush, indicating that it was oversteamed.
All signs point to an inexperienced dim sum master/chef (sifu, 师傅), an unseasoned pan that wasn't heated up high enough, and a rush to pre-make everything and leave the food stacked together in a bamboo steam basket for hours on end.
We brought this to the attention of the manager, who admitted he'd never been to Hong Kong and doesn't eat this kind of food. He defended the chef as being from Hong Kong. But this argument rang hollow as being *from* a certain country doesn't mean you know how to cook a particular cuisine.
I understand that the Michelin rating only applies to the location that the testers dined at. But Tim Ho Wan now has almost four dozen franchised locations around the world. If a franchise owner were to use such a renown name to lure in customers and charge premium prices, he/she is setting an expectation that they would be able to replicate (to a close extent) the tastes, flavors, and dining experience of the original award-winning restaurant.
Clearly, the Taipei franchise owner missed this lesson. Shame on the franchise owner. And shame on Tim Ho Wan's owner for letting quality control slip this far.
Frankly, save your money and spend your money elsewhere. Or fly to Hong Kong and visit the main location of Tim Ho Wan instead.