We began with the cold starters of fresh & succulent boiled prawns, poached green mussels, poached clams & salmon sashimi. The prawns were really crunchy and made excellent accompaniments to the mee siam and laksa to follow. The mussels, clams & salmon were pretty normal. Would be good if the mussels and clams were bigger in size and were sweeter.

The hi tea buffet was mainly made up of local delicacies like kueh pie tees which you can make yourself. I’m sure I had at least 4 pieces of that! The pie shells were nicely fried and weren’t too oily which was good. Add in the turnip with dried shrimps (hae bee), mashed eggs, prawns and top with chinese parsley. It was a wholesome treasure bowl! Crunchy on the outside and juicy on the inside. Simply delicious!

There was an assortment of fried stuffs like breaded prawn balls, assorted ngoh hiang, pumpkin rolls, carrot cake but I wasn’t so much into them as they were quite oily.

One thing I would like to recommend is the muah chee which was warm, soft and slightly chewy and well coated with peanut powder that was not overly sweetened. If not for its high carbo content which would fill me up quickly, I could have eaten loads of that!

I would like to pay special tribute to this simple yet addictive enough for me to go for a second bowl of Ice Kachang where you could scoop loads of attap chees (nipah palm), red & green rubies (best condiment ever!), coloured jellies, grass jelly, sweet corn, red bean, lotus seed and so much more. They had a good ice shaving machine so the ice came out smooth and fine. Must eat!

Though I just dined at Carousel for New Year Eve, I’ve also booked a table for CNY Reunion Dinner (or rather Hi Tea again). Can’t wait to return to try all the other items which I didn’t have space for earlier. Shall blog Part II after CNY!