Shanghai Ding, New World Park

Eating out starts to get repetitive after a while. Especially when we're pining for good la mian and we're in Penang. We found ourselves back at Shanghai Ding's branch at New World Park, despite having had a less than stellar dining experience there a while back. It was one of those lazy afternoons where we just couldn't think. Plus, based on the fun we had at their original outlet near Queensbay, we figured this one deserved a second chance.

And the verdict? Meh. More of the same, unimpressive, cookie cutter chain store disease.

Noodles with Minced Pork. The la mian was decent, but the minced pork sauce was a sickly sweet sour variety that tasted bottled. Next please.

Plain noodles with spring onion, served with peanut sauce. Probably one of the very few redeeming features of this branch is this... they manage to get it right because really, how many ways can you get something this plain wrong? The delicate flavour of the sauteed spring onion blended extremely well with the chunkier peanut sauce.

Shanghai Meat Dumpling. Have had better. The filling was too scarce and simply not quite soupy enough.

We ordered Kai Lan to balance out all the carbs but this came sorely overcooked and limp, practically fell apart when held by chopsticks. I like my vegetables to maintain a bit of crunch, unless to mask the lack of freshness.

Prawn dumpling, which came looking more like Siu Mai than the traditional Har Gao. We did dimsum here shortly after it opened and excused the frozen taste of the dumplings then, opening glitches and all. Nothing has changed. Still frozen, still tasteless, still looking like mangled pet food. Under NO circumstance should one order dim sum here. You have been warned.

Papa Chow ordered a Claypot Spare Rib rice (not pictured), which came in a serving fit for half a child. Carbo-driven Papa was NOT happy.

The bill came up to RM48, which was borderline reasonable, considering the location. I would come back for the plain noodles, but not much else.