NO DIM SUM?

SHANGHAI SHANGHAI

After traipsing around town looking for a nice new dim sum restaurant to try, me and my friend found this little spot in Hockley which we thought we'd give a try.We walked into the restaurant at 11:50 and were told by a guy who appeared to be a manager that they weren't open for another 10 minutes. This wasn't something that was said apologetically or even nicely but as though we were told to leave. The man was just stood behind the counter on his phone and it did seem slightly unnecessary. 

After waiting outside for 10 minutes, we were sat down and given our menus. I flicked through trying to find the dim sum which I had been so looking forwards too. I asked the same man "excuse me, do you have a dim sum menu?" to which he replied "No, we don't do dim sum". This was very surprising since in the window it clearly states 'dim sum chinese restaurant and bar', similarly their main tagline on their website reinforces this again. We were a bit annoyed, especially since, again, the man was not apologetic. We were starving and the menu still looked good so we thought we would give it a go.

I ordered the salt and pepper squid, won ton soup and chicken satay skewers. My friend ordered salt and pepper tofu and the spicy vegetable noodle soup bowl.. The starters were nice and well presented, in particular the chicken satay sauce was really tasty. My friends main of the noodle soup however, was seriously bad. It was extremely spicy, somewhat fishy and she couldn't even nearly finish it. My squid was dry and my won ton soup again, average. 

Overall, the trip wasn't particularly memorable, the service wasn't great, the food was ok and being a 'dim sum' restaurant without dim sum it felt like false advertising. Another point to make is that after looking at their website, their homepage even has photos of dim sum - which they do not serve. Strange! In the window there was newspaper articles of food awards they had received and this had definitely got me excited to begin with and left me feeling so underwhelmed by the end. I wouldn't return there again and not sure if it somewhere I would recommend for others to try.