I'd Like The Rat-Shaped Chicken, Please.

House of Ming Restaurant at the Taj Mahal Hotel - New Delhi, India
Date of Dining: December 2011


Happy 2-12-12 day, LilyOnTheLam.Com Readers!


It's not every day that you have a large goldfish bowl on your restaurant table while you're clamoring for more, more, more rat-shaped chicken; but as an American traveling in India I just chocked it up as another day of adventure.


My baby sister ("Squidge") is graduating from University this year.  One of her roommates is from Delhi, India.  For the winter school break, Squidge decided to visit her roommate in India and asked if I would like to come along.  Luckily I still had some vacation days left, so off we went to India!


Squidge and I are half-Chinese and we love good dim sum.  (Check out my blog posts of my dim sum meals in Australia and Florida here.)  We know enough Chinese and Taiwanese to order our dim sum favorites.  When we heard that there was a dim sum restaurant in Delhi, we knew we had to check it out.


We were staying at the fantastic, amazing, stupendously luxurious Leela Palace in the Diplomatic Enclave section of New Delhi.  The Leela had just been built in 2011, so everything was top notch.  After Delhi, Squidge was headed to Goa and Mumbai; while I was headed to Chennai.  When I returned to Delhi after Chennai, I would be staying at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Delhi.  (Not to be confused with the Taj Palace hotel in Delhi.)


I needed to drop off a suitcase at the Taj Mahal hotel before I headed to Chennai (darn those cheap inter-country airlines and their weight restrictions!), so Squidge and I decided to have lunch at the House of Ming at the Taj Mahal Hotel.


If you are a vegetarian in America or in any other country where carnivores rule, get yourself over to India.  I have never seen such a wide variety of vegetarian options in my life.  To me, dim sum is mainly pork and shrimp.  House of Ming had an amazing amount of vegetarian dim sum.  Check out their menu here.  


Side Note:  When Squidge was around 11 years old, I took her to Hawaii for two weeks.  It was there that we encountered the retail store Crazy Shirts' mascot, Sharka.  Many years later, Squidge and I both still have our Sharka key chains from that trip.  Squidge also has several larger stuffed Sharkas.  We decided for our trip to India that we needed to bring a Sharka with us.  I only explain this so you understand why occasionally you may see a stuffed shark toy in my India photographs.  Please don't judge.  ;-)  Also, since Squidge and I both have Sharkas; Squidge's Sharka is named Sharka.  My Sharka is named Cousin Louie - the seedy, low life shark that no one likes to see at family reunions.  I said, don't judge!  So be on the look out for Cousin Louie in the following photographs.  It's like "Where's Waldo?" but a heck of a lot easier.


The House of Ming at the Taj Mahal hotel reminds me of an old school Chinese restaurant.  Which for some reason was oddly soothing.  I thought to myself that this restaurant obviously knows how to do it the right way.


As I try not to be a sloppy drunk when going out with my baby sister, I ordered an "Electric Sugar Cane."  It is pineapple juice muddled with fresh mint and "lengthened with soda."  (Reading off the menu here.)  Squidge had a fresh mango juice.

House of Ming menu, an Electric Sugar Cane drink, fresh mango juice and a friend.

Squidge and I have our usual dim sum favorites, but not everything we usually enjoyed in America was offered on the menu.  We decided to branch out from our usual.


We ordered:


- Glutinous rice with chicken in a lotus leaf (500 Indian Rupees)
- Pak choy and sesame - a vegetarian dumpling option (450 Indian Rupees)
- Char siu bao - roast pork steamed buns (500 Indian Rupees)
- Flaky Shrimp (550 Indian Rupees)
- Sweet Corn Chicken Broth (500 Indian Rupees)


Our server brought out a plate with a trio of sauces: honey ginger (incredibly good), soy and green onion and last but not least, tomato with chiles.

The sweet corn chicken broth was very reminiscent of the soup I normally have at American Chinese restaurants.  It was hot, rich and lush with fresh-tasting corn.  I like to put in a generous amount of white pepper in the soup to seriously raise the heat quotient.  But that's just me and my wacky palate!

Next came the flaky shrimp.  I normally do not like flaky shrimp in American dim sum restaurants.  The shrimp almost always tends to be overcooked, resulting in "rubber in phyllo straw."  Not appetizing.  Squidge ordered these flaky shrimp and I am so glad she did.  The shrimp was tender and wrapped in some sort of chopped filling.  I am going to guess and say chopped water chestnuts in a honey type sauce. The crispy fried straw around the shrimp was hot and crunchy.  These were some excellent flaky shrimp.  If only my local dim sum place could make them as good as these.

Next we had our first vegetarian dumpling option - the Pak choy and sesame.  To be perfectly honest, when we ordered this we thought it would be a plate of stir-fried bok choy-type greens.  But no, it was a plate of 4 steamed vegetable dumplings.  They really had zero flavor and I didn't see or taste any sesame.

It seemed like at House of Ming, one dish would be super tasty and then the next dish would be blah, then the next dish after that would be great and so on and so forth.  The next dish was the char siu bao - steamed pork buns.  These also tasted exactly like the ones at American Chinese restaurants, which was fine by me because I like the ones served in America.

Char siu bao and an inside look at a piece of flaky shrimp

The glutinous rice with chicken in lotus leaf was not a good thing.  I grew up with my maternal Chinese Grandmother making this dish for me.  You take glutinous rice and steam it until it becomes all tender and one massive glob of sticky rice.  The rice that House of Ming used did not have that glutinous factor  - it was hard, undercooked grains that had no sticking power whatsoever.  The chicken filling was nice, but the hard rice really made this dish a waste.  We did not finish it.

The inside of the lotus leaf - not so glutinous sticky rice

A family of four - grandmother, mother, father and young son - sat down at the table next to us.  The server ran off and quickly brought them a large goldfish bowl.  Being a dumb American, my eyes popped out and I said "what are they going to do with the FISH?"  Turns out this is the House of Ming's version of a coloring book and crayons.  The goldfish bowl is supposed to keep the little ones entertained while the adults eat.  Neat concept, but not sure for how long a goldfish can hold a kid's attention.  Although perhaps Indian children are not crazy over-sugared and over-stimulated like American children!  I was just relieved to hear that this was not do-it-yourself sushi!

Since a couple of our dim sum dishes were not as good as we would have hoped; we decided to roll the dice again and order one more dim sum item.  The server brought over the menu and I saw something that made me do a double take.


"Um, excuse me, sir."  I asked the server.  "But what is ... um ... what is rat-shaped chicken exactly?"


"It's chicken shaped like a rat."  He replied.


"Oh."  I said and then turned to my sister.  "Um, chicken shaped like a rat.  What do you think?"  Squidge agreed that we should go for it.


Now if you're interested in trying the rat-shaped chicken at the House of Ming in Delhi, India; order it first.  The rat-shaped chicken are made to order and take 20-25 minutes.  It, like most of the dim sum menu, cost 500 rupees.


When I heard the rat-shaped chicken would take extra time, I wondered if it was like some sort of rat-shaped chicken soufflé?  So confused!  I had no idea what to expect.  After 25 minutes, this plate of four little guys appeared.

Ohhhhhh!  So it is chicken, shaped like a rat!


OK, it's actually quite more.  You take a glutinous rice dough and fill it with mushrooms at the tail end of the "rat." You fill the remainder with chopped chicken.  Then you roll the dough into an oblong "rat" shape.  Score eyes and whiskers on its "face" and then deep fry the dough tube.  Once finished cooking, you add nuts for the "ears" and a bean sprout for the "tail."  You stick him on a plate with three of his friends and there you have rat-shaped chicken!  Or chicken shaped like a rat. Chef Richie Farina at Moto Restaurant should add this to his repertoire.

The Rat-Shaped Chicken is watching YOU.

The bean sprout tail.

Almost too cute to eat.

Sorry, you're not only cute but you are delicious.  
Inside view of the "rat."

The rat-shaped chicken was the best dim sum I ate at House of Ming.  It was simple, tasty and good.  Plus super cute!  I ordered a "Spring Fever" to accompany my rat-shaped chicken.  The menu said it was "subtle flavors of cucumber and rock salt enhanced by cranberry juice."  The cucumber tasted off.  The cranberry juice tasted off.  I should have stuck with Electric Sugar Canes.  No more Spring Fever for me!

The service was very slow at House of Ming, but to be fair the service was pretty slow at most of the restaurants I went to in India.  So perhaps I need to reccaliberate my expectations on what proper customer service in India is.  I asked for one order of the toffee banana for dessert for Squidge and I to share.  After a long time, they brought us out two orders.  I had been in India for about a week at this point and I was already exhausted of trying to sort out bad customer service.  The whole "yes, yes, yes" mentality when usually the answer was "no, no, no" had already used up all the good humor I had.  (And trust me, I don't have a lot of good humor.)  I sighed wearily and told Squidge we'd just eat them both versus trying to send one back.  Squidge, also tired of trying to rectify issues with customer service; agreed to just eat the extra dessert.  Lucky for us, it was incredibly good.  Deep-fried banana, hot and melty inside a toffee-candy shell coated with sesame seeds.

We thought the toffee banana was served with ice cream, but it actually tasted like frozen Cool Whip.  Which we were both fine with because we actually like frozen Cool Whip.  (Don't judge!)

When the toffee banana had finally arrived after a long wait, I asked our server if we could get the check. I figured since the service was so super slow that we'd be done eating dessert by the time the server actually brought the check.  The server told me no, he wouldn't bring the check now.  He would bring it when we were done eating.


Look, I get that you're supposed to sit and enjoy your meal leisurely.  In fact, my Valentine's Day post is a tribute to a place that is all about slow and relaxing.  However the service at House of Ming was Grandfather Tortoise slow and my sister had a plane to catch that day.  I was annoyed by the server's flippant response to us.


We finished our dessert and another server brought out these candy-coated nuts.  They were tasty and evidently something to snack on while we waited and waited and waited for our check.

Finally, the check arrived.  I paid and we were ready to get out of there.  I would be sending Squidge off to Goa, India with a box containing one rat-shaped chicken and a bunch of candied nuts.  The ultimate airport snack!

While I wouldn't say dim sum at House of Ming was the best dim sum I have ever had, if you are in Delhi I would highly recommend you stop in for some rat-shaped chicken and a toffee banana.


And perhaps if you look bored, they may just bring you a goldfish bowl to keep you entertained.


P.S. Tune in to LilyOnTheLam.com on Valentine's Day for my 100th blog post!


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