Yummy yum char

And there I was getting jaded about yum char, which to me and Ernest, has been quite a weekly affair. We have accustomed to huge queues, rude wait staff at the entrance telling us to take a number and hide in any hole you can find at the entrance of the restaurants at Kam Fok or Marigold or the atas one at Rhodes (so you do not block other customers), rude wait staff INSIDE the restaurant after you have waited for at least 1 hour every time before your number is called (I quite like the Rhodes one cos you can at least waste time at Ikea (pronouced I-khere here in Sydney, but deemed to be yi-khere to Ernest) and faced with a mortgage-threatening bill after you finish playing with, say, about 5 small plates of morsels, drinking their tea and basically just taking space in the restaurant and breathing in the same air.

Everytime I get the bill and stared at the average $30 to $40 bill per person at the yum char restaurants in Sydney, I ask Ernest why we are paying people to torture us the whole morning and therefore rendered us still hungry and extremely fustrated. We always have no answer to that.

Then Jack said we should try out this yum char place in the city, Regal. Inwardly I was thinking it might not be a good idea...meeting friends outside the restaurant and basically camped there hungry and staring at the other people inside just like how typical Singaporeans does to will someone mentally to finish their food and go. And why should we subject ourselves to poor service again?

But hey. Regal turned out to be a nice surprise. We went without a booking and got seats immediately. Maybe it's the recession and people are not eating out as much. Maybe we look hungry. Haha. But it's nice to be seated without waiting.

And then, the trolley dollies are prettier. More courteous. And the food served is steaming hot. All ticks almost immediately.

I got my extra portion of chilli without any facial complains from the wait staff. Hot water is promptly topped up in our tea pot every second the water level got to halfway point.

The gaudy chandeliers accessorising the ceiling (I counted about 10. How to keep them clean? Omigod, I dun want to think about it) made it feel like we are dining in some kind of 1960s rich men restaurant. Yeah, quite old fashioned like the restaurant's name Regal.

And bonus points for missing our Ernest who hopped into the toilets for a beat and they billed us a bill for 5 teas instead of 6. And extra bonus points for a more competitive pricing. It is cheaper here in Regal than in anywhere else we have yum char-ed before. I am definitely coming back here again.