Man Ho occupies an elegant, spacious dining room on a second floor corner of the JW Marriott. It’s everything you expect from a long-standing five-star hotel restaurant. You’ve got efficient captains who’ve been waiting over the same Thai-Chinese families for years; and even if you’re new to the place, the service still manages to be both brisk and ceremoniously courteous.

The Cantonese and Szechuan food served here is truly excellent, too, placing Man Ho in the top league of high-end hotel Chinese restaurants in Bangkok, alongside Chef Man (Eastin), Liu (Conrad) and Mei Jiang (Peninsula). But Man Ho never quite comes out on top of the heap, whether you’re going for dim sum or a la carte.

To sample its dim sum (daily 11:30am-2:30pm), choose between a B690 all-you-can-eat option during weekdays or the fancier B950 set (all week) that includes roast duck and moo daeng (roast pork). If you’ve got a hearty appetite, this is one sexy proposition but don’t expect the thinnest dough, or the most flavor-packed produce. (Our top dim sum pick would be Chef Man, at the Eastin).

You’ll probably also be wanting to try the Peking duck (B1,300). While we’re particularly impressed with the pancakes, which somehow manage to be paper thin while retaining a slightly chewy mouth-feel, the duck’s skin isn’t quite as impressive. Lean and tasty, yes, but lacking a bit of crisp. And while the texture of the duck meat in the accompanying sweet and sour dish was close to perfect, we felt the sauce was too sweet.

They do claim their kitchen’s specialty to be more on the vegetables and seafood side (the abalone soup, B1,700, in particular), and we must admit they are particularly impressive with their greens, both in terms of flavor and texture.

The bright, sun-filled dining room, which has huge bay windows on two sides due to its corner location, and the well-priced dim sum deal make Man Ho a particularly pleasant lunch spot. But when it comes to dinner and a la carte dishes, we just wish that what’s on the plate could be as dazzling as the lovely waitresses flitting about in their quipao.