Tai Soen — Restaurant in Utrecht

Twice I ordered their Yang Chow fried rice, and twice the dish was pathetic. The rice and char siew were dry and the prawns were clearly overcooked to the point of almost being rubbery. They have the cheek to charge €12.50 for this nonsense.

The problem is this: fried rice is probably one of the easiest dishes for a restaurant to serve. If one can’t trust a Cantonese restaurant’s chef to get this dish right, can one truly trust their other dishes to be acceptable? (I have ordered their other dishes on a previous occasion and the food was dismal and poorly prepared.)

Basically I feel that no one at Tai Soen is interested in serving good-quality food, and furthermore the dishes have been localised for the Dutch palate (i.e. the food is no longer authentic). It’s unfortunate that they’re one of the few Cantonese restaurants in Utrecht, but this is probably why they have traffic in the first place. Having a monopoly, however, is no excuse to not take pride in preparing one’s dishes.

But the chrysanthemum tea is free of charge, so they’ve got that one thing...

We were in Utrecht for a day trip on 19 August 2022 and wanted to have something light as my wife's tooth was acting up. The waitress who attended to us was attentive and provided good service. However, another staff member, probably the supervisor, walked away from our our table even before we could ask further questions and placed addition order. She then proceeded to have lunch with the cook... Generally, the food was rather average and bland. The 'icing' on the cake was the xiao long bao (steamed dumplings). This item arrived when we were nearly finished with all the items that we had ordered (as shown in the photo - not arrived with the other dishes). The cook probably forgot that he had steamed the dumplings as the 'skin' were hard as rock and the fillings did not have any soup - dried meat. (The unique feature of this dish is that the 'skin' should be soft and succulent and there should be some 'soup' when you bite into the meat fillings). What a disappointing...

A classic authentic Cantonese Dim Sum restaurant, the kind you find all over the globe. The food consists of the well known traditional Dim Sum dishes and are good as always, just like the atmosphere, buzzing, busy and tables with friends and family or the busy business person. Tai Soen is the only authentic Dim Sum resaturant in the city of Utrecht and is therefore unique in the area between Pizza's and Kebbab. These authentic Dim Sum restaurants are a dying breed in The Netherlands. There is 1 left in the City Of Eindhoven, 2 left in the city of a Rotterdam and a handfull in the city of Amsterdam. So my rating is a tribute to the guts and glory of authentic Dim Sum resaturants for keep on going, and this time specifically to Tai Soen in Utrecht for their great food, authentic taste of dishes and for being there as a survivor in this ever...