Le Mei Chinese Restaurant @ Le Méridien Putrajaya — Restaurant in Sepang

Disclaimer: we were offered complimentary moon cakes but it hadn't in any way influenced my review here. Just to share my experience & nothing more.

Yummy family weekend Yum Cha session at Le Mei @ 11am 23rd Aug 2020. My wonderful experience started when my initial point of contact with Ms Ellina (receptionist) enquiring about the menu. I was introduced to Ms Tiffany Cheong who even walked the extra miles of forwarding a Google map & menu a day before.

Quality Products are not necessarily premium ingredients Most important elements of superior Dim Sum is freshness of ingredients as most of the selections are steam-served & some creativity to attract younger generation to our communal Cantonese Yum Cha culture.

To me these few varieties are of utmost importance in representating Dim Sum restaurants' spirits "Ling Wan" - Har Gow, Char Siew Buns, Fish Balls, Glutinous Rice, Rice Rolls with Prawns "Cheung Fun". These are fundamentals in a dim sum chef’s repertoire. I avoid restaurants that mess up these basics. In my humble opinion, other varieties play supporting roles.

Some highlights:- Crystal Jade Shrimp 🍤dumplings - I counted close to 13 pleats on translucent chewy thin "green-tinted" skin & succulent fresh prawns. Common from bad to worst Har Gow which I dislike are as follows:

1. Most dim sum restaurants serve heavily "sugar soaked" "frosty-frozen" type which I termed "dead" prawn taste.
2. I dislike Har Gow with too much patchy-slimy starch below it's skin to "glue" the prawn fillings.
3. Too thick skin & immediate separation of skin & prawn fillings when you use chopsticks to clamp it out from basket

Fried Carrot Cake I liked it with a little "wok hei" & lots of ingredients, not salty & with chicken floss garnishing. Texture - carrot 🥕 cake a little crispy outer & soft inside. This is unlike the Pasar Malam "hard" cake type & too much of dark soya sauce.

Char Siu Bao "Chicken" My take on perfect steamed Char Siu Bao is snowy white and cracked open bao at the top. Skin shouldn't be too sticky & fluffiness is a must. It's fluffy skin:filling ratio with chicken, vegetables & slight gravy made this a good combination.

Wolfberries & Osmanthus flower jelly It's quite good - less sugar, jiggly, softer texture & distinctively fragrant flower. Most other restaurants serve hard agar-agar jelly version which I don't enjoy much.

Flavour All their dim sum & Cantonese dishes were flavourful to my taste. However, I am not really fond of it's fried dim sum. Surely this is just my preference. Some like fried dim sum more than steamed. Another plus point was the dipping sauces - XO sauce with lots of dried shrimps & seafood chilli sauce. Most restaurants neglect these but not here.

Personality of Chefs Frankly, meeting friendly chefs & having some feedback, responses, chats are always a PLUS points in total food experience. Glad we met Executive Chef Mr Liou & Pastry Dim Sum Chef Mr Yau that are both passionate & keen on sharing their style, preparation etc of their masterpieces.

Value for money We had so many (61 in total) baskets of dim sum, soup, desserts, ice cream etc RM1,020 nett & after 40% CIMB discounts it came to RM612 for 10 pax (including 3 children) rather a value for money deal in a 5 Stars Marriott hotel benchmark.

Consistency of food quality Can't really comment as it was my 1st time here.

Ambience Ms Tiffany Cheong arranged a big room for us 2 tables X 5 pax each during RMCO. It was a quiet Sunday morning with just 2 more tables in the hall. Once in a while I like this peaceful atmosphere rather than my regular visits to crowded Guangzhou Yum Cha restaurants. I have been a frequent visitor - birth place of dim sum @ Guangzhou Restaurant, Panxi, Bei Yuan, Tao Tao Ju, Dian Duo De, Jade Garden, Lei Garden, Lin Heung Teahouse, Man Ho Marriott Guangzhou Tianhe etc. My humble review here is based on authentic Cantonese dim sum experiences which might not be suitable to...

my family and I have been here about 4 times as the food is great value for money with maybank's 40% off but this last visit I've realised there are consistent poor hospitality:

service is extremely slow there are 5 people in my family but every single time they will only give us 1 menu and we have to ask numerous times for more. how can 5 people share 1 menu? 🥹 once we gave up waiting for so long we just went to get them ourselves all the times we've come here there are maybe only 2 tables occupied. with about 6-8 on ground staff, you would think the service would be quick but it's not. had to ask for a straw from 3 different waiters and a total of 4 times before I got it haha same with the bill, you just have to keep asking and asking one guy in particular is very blur unfortunately. he will say okay okay and then proceeds to stand at the side doing nothing for so long we just need to ask the next waiter 😂

food & drink is also very slow orange juice 15 mins kailan 1 hour HAHA

one time we were accidentally charged 2 desserts (that we cancelled bcs it took too long and they happen to give out free ones that night for some event/occasion) it's okay, accidents happen. but they made it hard to claim back and we ended up never claiming it or bothered to continue arguing with them for our money back

given that le meridien is a well known hotel, I hope they can improve else there are other hotels with much much better...

Our go to place for Chinese food . Give their dim-sum a try !

Update : Le Mei never fails in service but we had a really bad experience yesterday ( Sunday, 11th December) . There were two big groups seated in the private rooms and it seemed that their staffs were not trained to handle the floor efficiently. It took about an hour to prepare our noodles and some dishes were off the menu.

Dim sums were served without any dipping sauce . It took a while for waiters to bring in the sauces.

Waiters appeared to be very confused and there was only one floor manager who seemed to handle the flow efficiently.

Regardless of your crowd flow in the restaurant, hope that this will be taken as a feedback for improving work flow in the restaurants . Some customers with kids were left waiting for an hour…

I hope it was just a bizarre day and it won’t happen again as we really like...