Jiang Chuan Shangmeilin 匠傳 上梅林店 (Shenzhen, CHINA) ★★★☆☆

We started another journey in Shenzhen late this morning and our game plan was to spend the majority of our time at InJoy (卓悅匯) perched on top of Shangmelin station (上梅林站).

After making more than 10 trips to SZ this year, my team was already a little sick of the dining options at the popular shopping malls as they are mostly from restaurant chains. With that in mind, I have taken to the social media in my quest to find ourselves a lunch venue today and thanks to the help from Dianping (大眾點評), I was able to find Jiang Chuan (匠傳) just across the street from Shangmeilin station.

With the huge lineups at some of these popular restaurants in SZ, it would be impossible to get a table without at least an hour's wait unless you have the "美味不用等" app installed on Wechat. Saved us a lot of time and energy.

With almost 50 years of experience, Jiang Chuan is best known for their top-quality handcrafted dim sum (手工点心).

I kinda like this idea of having self-served water supply right at our table side. No need to bother our servers!

The handmade dim sum did take longer than I thought but one by one, they finally arrived. 

Xiao long bao with crab roes (蟹黃小籠包) (¥29) – Not the best presentation but the flavors were all there. The umami-rich meat broth, sweetness from the crab roes...

Little nugget loves his xiao long bao so of course, he was all over the steamed pork dumplings with crab roes.

Steamed red rice rolls with crispy prawn (鮮蝦紅米腸) (¥35) – This is everywhere in SZ. I thought Fan Lou (蘩樓) has one of the best steamed red rice roll in town but this wasn’t bad. I like the size of these too, exactly one bite apiece.

Steamed rice rolls with diced vegetables and seaweed (海苔羅漢齋腸) (¥25) – Its greenish color caught my attention while I was going through the menu. This came with all kinds of diced vegetables including sweet corn, carrot, mushroom, black fungus and yam (沙葛), which was a pretty nice combination for a vegetarian food lover like me.

On the down side, I thought the sweet soy could be a little more flavorful.

Steamed shrimp dumpling in ginseng soup (匠傳參湯鮮蝦餃皇) (¥49) – The har gow was served with a jar of warm ginseng soup on the side. This is apparently one of the restaurant’s signature dim sum.

Personally, I didn’t find the broth made with ginseng and cordyceps (蟲草花) to be a nice match with the shrimp dumpling but little nugget thought the world of it saying they’re a match made in heaven!

Deep-fried turnip cake (香煎蘿蔔糕) (¥21) – Dry and a little lacking in ingredients like Chinese preserved sausage and mushroom.

Rapeseed oil Youtiao (花籽油炸油條) (¥15) – Nice and Crispy, but a little oily. Like the one from Tao Tao Ju (陶陶居) a little more.

Deep-fried glutinous rice ball (怪獸很有料) (¥19) – This was really just a giant deep-fried glutinous rice ball (煎堆) with a monster face. 

The glutinous rice flour was flavored with something sweet (pumpkin?) and it was paired with a savory-sweet filling which included peanut butter. 

Jelloman thought there was winter melon (冬茸) in the stuffing, but whatever it was, it tasted a little funny.

Bitter melon mousse (苦瓜慕絲) (¥19) – According to Dianping, Jiang Chuan has some of the best desserts for a dim sum restaurant. Since they have a number of new creations in the sweet department, I decided to randomly pick one out for the sake of my photo session.

I have to admit, this looked pretty cute and it’s 99% like a real bitter melon.

Little one never had bitter melon before and after promising him that it won’t be bitter like the real thing, he decided to take a few wracks at it.

It’s pretty difficult to put the flavors into words. I thought it initially tasted like melon or cantaloupe but once the mix of flavors sank in, there was the bitterness (from the mayo) on top of the sweetness. The bittersweet combination did have a bit of resemblance of a bitter melon.

Well, our lunch took a little longer than expected so time to do some catching up first at the arcade centre.

Food Rating: 5.6/10

Price: ¥¥¥

Address: Zhongkang Venture Park, 73 Zhong Kang Road, Futian, Shenzhen, China

深圳市福田区中康路73号中康创业园

Closest Metro Station: Shangmeilin (上梅林)

Tel: +86 (755) 8253-4912

Opening Hours: 8:00am - 2:30pm, 5:00pm - 8:30pm (Mon - Fri), 8:00am - 8:30pm (Sat - Sun)

Map: https://j.map.baidu.com/c0/8zn