Chennai Restaurant Reviews

Mainland China, Phoenix Market City

It was my son’s Birthday dinner and we gave him the option of choosing what to have for dinner and he chose Chinese. Basically he wanted dumplings, noodles and stuff. The nearest option was Mainland China in Phoenix Market City. We have been here a few times and had a pretty decent experience, always. Decided to stick to this place. However, I spotted the Thuraipakkam outlet on Zomato serving dinner buffet, and was quite excited! We headed all the way from Velachery to Thuraipakkam only to be told its closed ! Damn it, even Zomato screws up sometimes! Made a U-turn and headed all the way back to Phoenix Market City. We lost a good 40 minutes doing this, and of course the to-and-fro toll charges that we paid for nothing !


Finally stepped into the restaurant around 8:45PM, we were immediately seated and that was a good thing. We decided to skip the soup and go ahead with the starters. Ordered 1 Chicken Siu Mai and 1 Steamed Crystal Chicken Dumpling, both large portion with 6 pcs, a regular portion of Mushroom starter with ginger, a large portion of Sweet and Spicy Crispy Chicken, and a couple of mocktails – Mandarin Swirl and Watermelon with Cilantro Crusher. The starters came in about 15 minutes, all together and suddenly the table felt cramped as there wasn’t enough space to put all of it. Had to tell the waiter a few times not to immediately serve as I wanted to click pics and finally got through the clicking !
To start with, Mushroom was a bit of an expectation mismatch, expected it to be a bit more ‘cooked/fried’ whatever. It tasted ok though. Sweet and Spicy crispy chicken was a bit too sweet to my liking, kids loved it. Both were recommended by the waiter. The Chicken Siu Mai (Open Dumplings) and the Steamed Crystal Chicken Dumpling (closed Dumpling) was wonderful and disappeared in a jiffy! The accompanying sauces were awesome, especially the mustard one and the one in center with lots of pepper. As we wanted to have a little more of these, ordered 2 large potions of Chicken Siu Mai again. This took a really long time to come. Literally pushed our patience hard, and finally when it came, kids were almost tired of waiting. Anyway, again jumped on them and heartily finished that with all the sauces. The mocktails were good, Mandarin Swirl was Orange-based and was quite good with a nice flavor of mint.  Watermelon with Cilantro was okayish to me, because the cilantro wasn’t quite appealing, however kids liked that.  Quite full by now, decided to keep the main course simple.
Ordered one large portion of Burnt Garlic Chicken Noodles and a regular portion of Sizzling Chicken with Barbecued Onions to be shared among all four of us. The noodles was good and I liked the flavor in the Chicken dish. Meanwhile saw the waiters singing Happy Birthday to someone with a cake, or something that looked like a cake. I didn’t know they did something like that for guests’ birthday. Immediately informed the waiter about my son’s birthday and he readily agreed to do the same. My bad, I should have enquired earlier. So we asked for that to be brought after the main course.
The cake was basically honey glazed crispy noodles topped with Strawberry ice cream and a candle on the top of it. The Happy Birthday song was played, and the waiters sang the tune, and my son was pretty happy and enjoyed all the attention 🙂 It was nice of them, and they served this to all of us. It was crispy, sweet and tasty. Since I wanted to try their dessert, ordered just one Mango Pudding, and it was good. It was a small portion, so wasn’t much since all of us shared it. We were quite stuffed by now and the dinner ended pretty happily.
But for the delay in between and okayish starters, the rest of the experience was good and this dinner set us back by 3.3K and was well worth it. If it was just the food, there are quite a few cheaper alternatives for Chinese, or Indo-Chinese, but Mainland China gives you that additional nice experience of fine dining and that’s the premium you pay for it.

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