China Times Review | Dubai, UAE

My dad is an avid lover of Chinese cuisine and so he took me to try China Times in Deira City Centre. I had an absolute lovely time with my family here, the place was very empty so we had tip toe service for everything. The place was certainly very modern and chic. It's called China Times but it serves Japanese cuisine as well with a sushi train inside.

We ordered a large variety of food since we were seven people. For starters, my sister and I shared chicken corn soup (22dhs). This is, without fail the thing that we just MUST order if we go to a Chinese restaurant. However, when I first tried the soup it tasted so plain! There was so many chunks of chicken and I think the corn flour that was not mixed properly and was just downright not pleasant.

The rest of the food came at the same time, their service was super fast (probably because we were the only table being cooked for) and the china time dim sum basket we ordered (55dhs) came with three sauces.

 The hamour fish with mandarin and xo sauce (58dhs) tasted very peculiar, nothing that I was used to and it didn't exactly tickle my taste buds. I probably took a bite and couldn't bring myself to swallow another. 

So, this is sizzling tofu with vegetables. I guess I'm so used to the sizzling tofu they serve in Asian restaurants in Perth that I was disappointed when I saw this on the table. Taste-wise it was not that bad, but not that good either. It was quite bland, the only thing I could taste was pepper. Lots and lots of pepper.

As for the chicken noodles (38dhs) and mixed sushi, I was too full when I reached this dish so I didn't get to try it to make any comments. It looks great though, and nobody complained so I'm assuming it tastes decent.

This was the main star at the table for me. It was the first time I tried fried eggplant (33dhs) and the honey chilli sauce that went with it, nailed it. I thought this tasted amazing but my mother thought it tasted normal. I have no other eggplant-y dish to compare it to, but it's yum.

 All in all, the dishes were mediocre but I probably would just come again to have the eggplant with rice.

♥ Jess

Location: Level 2, Deira City Centre opp. Cinnabon
Opening hours: 11am-12am daily
Phone: 04 2952515

Von's chicken | East Victoria Park, Perth

This restaurant is almost purely just a restaurant that sells chicken and well, rice. There are a small selection of salad but I wouldn’t advise to actually get any.

I wasn’t sure what to get so I asked the cashier to recommend us the best selling dish which was apparently their fried chicken gold wings ($13.95).

It was quite okay? I think that it might have been like a classier sweeter version of KFC but it wasn’t anything special.

The portions weren't too big so we got some roast barbeque chicken ($13.95) as well in mild. This was much more appealing to my taste buds rather than the fried chicken. It was a tad spicy for mild so I can imagine the hot or extra hot one to burn your tongue a bit.

They supplied us with gloves and a bin which is very clever because we can eat with our hands without worrying how messy it will turn out to be.

The food was so-so I had the roast barbeque chicken first and it had such a strong flavor that when I went onto the fried chicken… well I couldn’t taste it that well.

Service was quite fast but the staff didn’t seem to be too friendly. I had to ask for tap water twice before actually getting some and it was troublesome since they only gave a single cup with no jug and every time I would like a refill I would have to try to get the waitress’ attention all over again.

Overall, I would probably not visit here again as it is quite expensive for chicken. For about $30 we got to have 10 small pieces of chicken (8 wings and 2 legs) and one serving of rice. The chicken they sell here is totally overrated.

♥ Jess