Red Star Restaurant

Reasonably priced! Love the old school style of push carts! The service provided by the popos were cute and sweet! They made sure you're well fed! (4/5)

Can you believe I have never been to this iconic restaurant in my life? It was only yesterday when my niece invited me along to lunch that I finally walked in here, to a place that seems to have been stuck in the 1970’s.
The vintage vibes aren’t just found in the decor of wall-to-wall carpeting, a retro stage and the trippy ceiling with Chinese bat motifs, but in the way they serve dimsum using glass-paneled trolley carts pushed around by ladies of a certain age. The protocol here is to wait for them to approach your table, then if what they have in their cart suits your fancy, you get however many you like. The ladies will then make some markings on your order sheet to indicate what you got. A few cart-less ones flit around to take ad hoc orders of items that don’t travel well, like soups for example.
The food itself is decent and hearty. I would recommend the fried yam dumplings, plain “chee cheong fun”, the fried dumpling/fritter with prawn and mango, and the version with prawn and banana. I also like the century egg porridge and fried radish cake too.
If you plan to go on a weekend and don’t wish to queue for a long time, I learned from my niece that it is better to arrive around 1.30pm when the first wave of the lunch crowd has eaten their fill and left.

Went to Red Star Restaurant for the first time with my family for lunch. Skip to the bottom for my recommendation.

We ordered:
▪Siew Mai 烧卖($4.50), gummy minced pork and prawn filling that could have been seasoned better, wrapped in a skin and steamed.
▪Ha Kau 虾饺($4.50), prawn dumpling with bits of prawn inside a semi transparent skin.
▪BBQ Pork Pie 叉燒酥($4.50) sweet barbeque pork that was average tasting stuffed inside a triangular shape pastry which should have been flaky.
▪Yam 芋头($4.50), a fluff of deep fried oily crispy thin batter with a delicious yam paste.
▪Pork Rib 排骨($4.50), braised tender soft pork rib with salty black bean sauce that was a little too salty and lacking in umami flavour.
▪Seaweed Prawn Roll 紫菜虾卷($4.70), minced prawn and squid paste wrapped in a skin with seaweed placed in the middle and deep fried. Resembling the seaweed chicken snack.
▪Liu Sha Bao 流沙包($4.70), soft steamed bao with a sweet molten salted egg filling.
▪Prawn Rice Roll 虾肠粉($4.70), plain rice roll with sliced prawn that lacks much taste.
▪Octopus 墨鱼仔($4.70), chilled small octopus marinated in a sweet red sauce.
▪Roasted Duck 烧鸭($14), well roasted duck with plum sauce.
▪Suckling Pig 烧猪($16), slices of roasted pig with nicely marinated chilled jellyfish.
▪Soft Shell Crab 软壳螃蟹($8), deep fried crunchy soft shell crab with lots of batter topped with chicken/pork(?) floss. A deep fried fanatic dream.
▪Mango Pudding 芒果布丁($4.70) slightly artificial tasting mango pudding with milk.

Avoid coming during the peak hours if you're famished as the food are all in a push cart so you will have to wait for them to push from table to table. If you happened to be the last few tables you might have to wait for a few rounds as they have to go back to the kitchen to keep replenishing the food in the cart.

If you decide to give this place a shot I would recommend ordering the Roasted Duck, Suckling Pig, Soft Shell Crab(if you like eating crispy deep fried batter) and Liu Sha Bao. Avoid the Siew Mai.