The Monks know their food

"The Monk", to me gives a more authentic feel than something like "Chinese room", "China House" etc. 

From the time you step into this place, you feel welcomed. For that price point, this place definitely feel classy. The staff is courteous and greet you well.

interiors

My friend and I went there for a supper. It was around 7:30pm and we were the only ones at that time, so it was really calm. They have wall hangings in the restaurant with things written in Chinese and the theme that they have used overall gave a feel as if I've come to some place in China.

They do not have too much variety in their menu. Now this, usually I would have felt is a drawback, but here, somehow I didn't. If you've carefully looked at a menu in a Chinese restaurant, a lot of the food items are similar and you end up ordering just a few specific ones when you have Chinese. So, instead of keeping more amount of similar items, they have kept just a few, but different ones. 

To start with, we ordered a Spicy Crab Meat Soup. Just like the name suggests, it is a soup. A spicy soup. A spicy soup that has crabs. Now since it said "spicy", for some reason I was expecting it to be reddish or orange-ish, but it was mostly just transparent. For a second there, I thought they had brought the wrong soup. But it was in fact the same one. It was a little spicy; but not as much as I expected. The taste was nice overall. We could get the taste of the crab, and there was plenty of it. 

Crab Soup

For appetizers, we thought of going for something simple and traditional so stuck with dumplings. Just a regular steamed chicken dumpling. After all, it takes more effort to make a simple dish taste delicious than one with lots of ingredients. 
They were really flavourful. They were soft, well steamed, not too many spices; a little sticky. Just the way they do it in China. They were served with a couple of sauces which complimented the taste very well.

Chicken dumplings

For mains, we decided to order the Chicken Wooly (since it had the 'chef's recommendation' mark on it), and along with it the Shanghai Rice.
The Chicken Wooly is finger sized chicken in soy sauce. Now after having had some yummy entrée, we had a lot of expectations from this one. It looked quite tempting when it was served, but somewhere I felt that it lacked flavour. The chicken could have certainly done with some more flavour. There was just the soy and the chicken. Well, I know that's what the description said, but I expected more from this dish.

Chicken Wooly

As for the rice, we had ordered the vegetarian option. It was a mix of rice and noodles. Something like the veg fried rice, but with some noodles too. It was delicious. Rice. Noodles. Vegetables. That was mostly it, and I totally loved it. Sometimes it is the simplicity that appeals to a foodie like me. 

Shanghai Rice

And just like I mentioned earlier about how classy this place is, here's another example. The stemmed glass makes something as extraneous as the ice tea sure look exemplary!

Some Ice Tea to quench our thirst.