Originally Posted by francophile
I took my parents to Lai Wah Heen at the Metropolitan Hotel in Toronto. I thought it was great. They thought it was a total waste of money.
LOL! That sounds like something my parents would say too
Everytime I go to Toronto, I make it a point to go to Lai Wah Heen. It's rare to find dim sum restaurants that don't do push-cart service in North America (the opposite is true in Asia) plus the service and the quality of the food at LWH is head and shoulders above the competition, IMO. Yank Sing in SF has clean bathrooms and awesome dim sum as well.
Originally Posted by francophile
My best dim sum meal has to be Jiang-Nan Chun at the Four Seasons Singapore. Exquisite and very imaginative dim sum, serene environment, and sterling service that is above and beyond the typical Four Seasons service in the United States. For US$30, I ate like a king.
I also had a dreamy dim sum lunch experience at Jiang Nan Chun. The service alone was worth the price of admission
So very elegant and so very civilized. Singapore has quite the monopoly on clean restrooms as it is probably illegal for it to be otherwise
I find most high-end Chinese restaurants anywhere in the world (including ones attached to hotels) to have impeccably clean restrooms (thankfully!). And I also find most mid- to low-priced Chinese restaurants anywhere in the world to have restrooms that are forbidding to the senses.
Most 5* hotels in Asia have at least one Chinese restaurant onsite but surprisingly, almost all do not in North America. I would've thought that a luxury chain like Mandarin Oriental which oozes all things Asian would have established a superior Chinese restaurant - with clean bathrooms to match! - in one of its North American establishments (Miami, NYC, SF, DC) by now. Maybe "expensive" and "Chinese restaurant" just don't compute for most Americans?