Eating Chinese in Bangkok

If you're used to the standard Chinese restaurant in the US or Europe, you have to come to Asia to experience high-style Chinese dining in many of the top hotels in Bangkok, Hong Kong and Singapore - with service and atmosphere as nice as any French restaurant.

We went to Liu at the Conrad in Bangkok for a dim sum lunch on Saturday. I first came to Liu about 5-6 years ago when the hotel first opened, and thought it was one of the prettiest Chinese restaurants I had been to.

We had an overabundance of food for lunch (of course!) since it turned out to be an all-you-can-eat menu. They did the standards quite well (bbq pork bun, har gao, siu mai etc) and also had a handful of creative dim sum.

They had also set up their moon cake stand in front of the restaurant. The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival takes place in Sept and moon cakes are a staple throughout Bangkok as Sept approaches. This was always one of my favorite festivals growing up - not only could I eat moon cakes to my heart's delight, but as a child, I also got to pick out a lantern every year and go out on the night of the full moon to parade around with all the other kids.

Back in the day (god, I sound old!), moon cakes came in either lotus or red bean flavors. These days, the flavors seem to be limitless. Even Starbucks gets in on the action with a coffee-flavored version (yes, it's as gross as it sounds!). The stand at Liu offered 8 different kinds of moon cakes to sample, including durian, custard, ginko. And sample we did!