Ocean's Palace

It's been a long while since I've been to Ocean's Palace. 

Not any particular reasons besides parking can get aggressive there.

Random pics of food: here's the crab ball... It's best to ask the server or the cart person to cut it in half, easy to share.

Custard cream bun, I should've gotten the red bean (azuki) bun.

Turnip cake, lots of people look down on it, but it was pretty good.  You can put in Chinese sausage, or just soy sauce.  This one is plain, but fried it very nicely.

Egg tart - not the best one I've tasted.  The shell was good, but the custard wasn't much.

This is something unique, Truffle Xiao Long Bao (port soup dumpling).  You can actually see the slices of truffles inside.  It's full of flavor and it's funny that they put the baos in the individual tins, so the soup will stay in.  This is a special order.

BBQ Pork Cheung Fun, this is something I grew up with, so I'd like to think I'm somewhat of an expert.  However, the noodles is not sold enough, as soon as you put the chopsticks in it, it all fell apart.  Taste was so -so as well.

Then we have tea leaf wrapped rice.

I love that it's stickie inside and has Chinese sausage.  Some has chicken bits in there.  Overall, a yummy dish.  One order came with 2, so it's easy to share.  One of the better dish here.

Overall, it's been many years since I've been here.  As a matter of fact, the last time I was here at Ocean's, I had to go upstairs to the grand hall for dim sum.  Now that they renovated, it does look more posh.  Gone are the days of the counter.  They have push carts, but they are not very good at making the rounds to all tables.  There was a larger party than ours, they had 3 full tables, and they ended up having their server bring a lot of the dishes.  On top of that the dishes wasn't as flavorful as I'd remember them being from 'way-back'.  The service, however, was great.  Our server was very thoughtful, though towards the end of our meal, she got more tables and was harder to track her down.  Otherwise, she was pretty diligent about making sure we have enough water and our ordered dishes get there.

For dim sum, small party coming here is fine.  When you have a large party, they won't seat you unless more than half of your party arrives.  And no, they don't take reservation, so if you have a large party, go early.  I think 10:30a or 11a for dim sum (aka Chinese brunch) is reasonable.

Ocean's Palace

11215 Bellaire Blvd

Houston, TX 77072

281-888-8888