Mei Kun is a place you want to go when you must please a wide range of palates.
Touted as a fine dining experience, the food and service is however more family-style: you wouldn’t feel uncomfortable choosing a spoon and fork over chopsticks, and the large bowls of rice and noodles that make up the ‘bulk’ of any Indian meal, taste of a sophisticated version of the kind of Chinese food with which most of us grew up.
Would I drive 25 km for it? Unlikely. Would I drop by if I’m in the vicinity? Possibly.
The vibe:What Mei Kun has going for it, is its large space and picture windows that look out onto trees — they help you ignore the somewhat outdated greige interiors.
Despite being in The Leela Ambience Convention Hotel, you can picture a large joint family come and while an afternoon away here. There’s no painfully loud music and no pretentiousness.
Do try: The white fungi coconut soup, which is really a meal by itself and takes good care of change-of-season colds.
The bao, which looked and tasted like a cloud; the succulent kung pao chicken. The star though, was a lotus stem ‘starter’, with a sweet-salty coating of oats. It’s the sort of taste and texture you want to keep nibbling on. The date pancake, though a tad sweet, had a crispy casing and soft heart.
Skip:The dimsums, which had too-thick ‘skins’ that overpowered the stuffing; the Singapore Crab that came in some red gravy, obscuring the sweet flesh of the crustacean.
Go with:Extended family.
Space bar: 42 covers
How much? ₹3,000 for two, sans alcohol
Reach: Mei Kun at The Leela Ambience Convention Hotel, 1 CBD, Maharaj Surajmal Road, near Yamuna Sports Complex; drive or cab it.
