Ever since I saw these crazy cute dim sum explode on Instagram, I knew Yum Cha would be top on my Hong Kong eat list. I couldn't find the time to fit it in the last time I was here, which was just a few months ago, so it has literally been on my mind for months.
Aside from the obviously cute and fun design twists on traditional dim sum, the food tastes just as good as it looks.
The tiny gold fish detailed bowls were so elegant and beautiful.
First off, the buns. So much choice of cute buns, and I'll admit I wanted to order all of them to ensure I'd have an Instagram-worthy pic
haha.
We settled on 4. The piggy char siu buns, doggy lap cheung rolls (Chinese preserved sausages), yellow molten salted custard buns and green molten matcha custard buns.
Both the molten buns were insanely delicious and I'd say they are must orders. The yellow salted custard is perfectly balanced between sweet and salty and the ooze is the right consistency for molten lava innards. The matcha buns are amazing, especially if you are a matcha fan like me. It gave a good hit of sweet green tea flavour and is something that other dim sum restaurants don't do.
Lap cheung rolls are my favourites and these are good ones. Fragrant with rice wine, the lap cheung is good quality with non-chewy skin.
The char siu buns were a good standard but surprisingly, nothing special to write home about.
We hit the jackpot with this spicy XO sauce fried radish cake, it was utterly delicious. XO sauce is such a Hong Kong taste and gives the radish cake a real oomph. By adding crispy lotus root and crunchy beansprouts, everything about this dish is a winning combo.
Triangle glutinous rice balls were moist, flavourful and were such tasty little morsels.
Angus beef is used as a modern twist on the traditional beef ho fun (beef fried flat rice noodles). I'm not usually a fan of the beef in this noodle dish since I don't like the texture of meat that has been marinaded with soda powder and then flash fried, but the Angus beef is a cut above the rest. The ho fun was full of wok hei, aka the breath of wok, a signature smoky flavourful gained from cooking noodles over a roaring fire.
The other dim sum selections we ordered included glutinous meat croquettes, har gow prawn dumplings with a multi coloured dumpling skin, siu mai dumplings, truffle and meat dumplings and char siu cheung fun (rice rolls). All were very good quality, well made and full of flavour.
The taste far exceeded my expectations for what seemed like a gimmicky cutesy designed dim sum restaurant and that made it a great dining experience. Our bill came to around $850 (£85) between 4 people which was pretty reasonable.
Address:
Yum Cha
3/F, 20-22 Granville Road
Tsim Sha Tsui
Hong Kong
Did anyone let out a squeal at the look of these crazy cute dim sums?!
I just had dinner and this post is already making me hungry. Those molten buns look so good! I love glutinous rice balls -- they're my favorite when I go yum cha.
ReplyDeleteHaha, sorry! Yes those buns were epic! Glutinous rice balls are never on the menu in London dim sum restaurants so these were a real treat.
DeleteYUM - the rest of the dim sum looks good too! Will have to try more when I'm back next time, but I think the molten custard bun was my favorite.
ReplyDeleteYes come back for dim sum next time. Their dinner menu sounds so good too, may have to try it =)
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