rev:text
| - I had dinner with a group of 10 at E Pan last night. This restaurant is a steep step up from most others in its vicinity - very clean, friendly staff, tasteful decor. It's a regular favourite dining spot for most of the people I was with but this was my first visit.
We walked in, 10 of us, on a Saturday evening, with no reservation and we were seated immediately with no fuss. Menus, tea and water were brought out swiftly. Throughout the meal, tea and water was replenished frequently without us having to ask - great service.
Since we each picked one dish, I don't remember the names of everything we had but I'd say 7/10 were excellent and the other 3 were quite good. The meat was tender, veggies seemed fresh. The dishes that stood out as being my favourites are the breaded grouper (I think?), the deep-fried squid, the terrific spicy beef hot pot, the sauteed greens (I forget which, specifically) and the stir-fried tofu. We also had these giant oysters - one each. I'm not a huge oyster fan but my companions seemed to think these were great.
The one very minor negative thing I could say is that of the 10 main dishes we ordered, the last two arriving at the same time were very similar beef dishes. It would have been better to have these two come out at different times to spread the beef through the meal, but maybe since the dishes were similar, they took the same amount of time to cook? This is only a small complaint.
Final price for 10 people to stuff themselves silly (soup, 10 main dishes, a giant oyster each plus complimentary dessert) was $167 including tax.
I definitely want to go back - it's good enough that I'd even bring my Chinatown-hating parents! Who will join me for the $34 Peking duck set?
|