Da Xi

Under the same Minor Food Singapore Group as many popular casual dining brands; Kiseki, Thai Express, Pizzakaya, Sanook Kitchen, Poulet, Xin Wang, Da Xi is an Asian fusion casual dining restaurant specialising in dumplings

With 4 locations across Singapore opened all around the same time, Da Xi is geared to take over Asian Fusion casual dining in the key neighbourhood. The restaurants have open-concept dining and minimalist decor except for warm lights and simplistic brown furnishings. While the outlets at Jurong point, Vivocity and Ang Mo Kio Hub are full fledge restaurants, the one at Novena is a takeout kiosk.

In terms of menu, they offer a varied number of Taiwanese dishes like braised pork rice, beef noodles and fried mushrooms. There are also a couple of Japanese dishes like teriyaki salmon or chicken rice bento and miso fish rice bento. The highlight of the restaurant is however the dumplings as they are supposedly freshly handmade daily and come in three flavours – original pork smoked duck and pork and chives. The dumplings can be cooked in 3 ways; boiled, pan-fried or in chicken broth

For side dishes, we ordered the crispy prawn twisters which look like fake fingers, crispy tofu with sesame dressing and salt and pepper oyster mushroom. The prawn twisters were wrapped in a skin similar to wanton skin which was fried till very crispy but I could hardly taste any prawn. The tofu was pretty general and the best out of the 3 would be the oyster mushroom which was crispy but not oily

For dumplings, we order both the pork and duck versions, 1 in soup and the other pan-fried. We had to wait for the pan-fried version longer than all the rest, in fact, we were almost done before it got served. The skin was crispy and nice but the insides were slightly dry. So this made the entire dish very dry on the throat. The soup version has a light chicken broth combined with the floury taste of the dumplings. The dumpling itself was much juicier compared to the pan-fried version. Between the pork and duck versions, I liked the pork version better as the duck was too dry for me

For the mains, we had braised pork rice and Da Xi stir-fried noodles. The noodles look extremely bland and colourless when served but it was surprisingly quite flavourful. The texture of the noodles was more like mee sua ( rice vermicelli) and the fried egg added a nice eggy taste to the overall plate. The braised pork on the other end was slightly disappointing not because it taste bad but because it did not taste like the Taiwanese version since it says Taiwanese Lu Rou Fan on the menu. The pork is soft and juicy and well braised but in terms of flavours, it tasted more like the local braised pork which was still nice but fell short of expectation

Overall, the food is not fantastic but it is generally ok for meals on a budget. Some of the items are still pretty palatable. The prices are pocket friendly and the atmosphere is quite relaxing for a meal

Address:1 HarbourFront Walk #02-83/83A, #84 VivoCity, 098585

Opening hours: 11am to 10 pm