Yum Cha

It was near Chinese New Year and we were strolling around Chinatown. Being a popular gathering place during Chinese New Year, this place was swarmed with locals as well as tourists from abroad. With the crowd, our instincts told us to find a nearest restaurant to settle our lunch first, which happened to be Yum Cha.

Paper wrapped chicken ($4.6) is one of their chef recommended dishes. There were two chicken mid joint wings wrapped up in each paper bag, making it convenient for sharing. The wings had a fragrant ginger taste and the sauce was thick and flavorful.

The secret of a delicious braised chicken feet lies in the sauce and the readiness of the chicken feet to absorb the sauce. This phoenix claws a.k.a. chicken feet ($4) were 'puff up' well, allowing it to soak up the sweet and spicy sauce to produce a succulent texture. It was so addictive that we ordered a second portion!

The pan-fried chives and meat dumpling ($4) was decent, with the bottom of the dumpling pan-fried to brown and crispy. The amount of chives and meat are also in good balance.  

I love chee cheong fun, especially the type with fillings. The skin is crucial in this dish, it has to be paper-thin, smooth and slippery. This BBQ pork rice flour roll ($3.6) was decent, but the skin bears similarity to those ready made chee cheong fun which usually accompanied by sweet sauce, a tad too thick in my opinion. 

This is lotus leaf glutinous rice ($4.2). Judging from the color of the leaves, it looked like it was steamed rather than baked. 

Unwrapping the leaves revealed the glutinous rice inside. It was not as plain as it looks, there were generous amount of meat hidden inside the glutinous rice!

Century egg and lean meat congee ($2.8) was smooth and not too salty. The crispy wanton skin made a perfect complement to the creamy congee. 

Seafoods were chopped and wrapped inside the wanton skin - yielding these seafood rolls ($3.8). Love every mouthful of it!

This is called crystal chives dumpling ($3.8), probably because the skin of the dumpling was transparent and crystal clear. The skin was chewy and each dumpling is packed with the goodness of chives.

Har gau and siew mai are the two classic dishes that we always order in dim sum places, so that we can have something common to compare across different restaurants. DG thought that the skin of this Yum Cha prawn dumpling ($4.6) was a tad too thick, but the prawn was fresh and crunchy. I found two prawns inside my dumpling!

Look at the generous amount of fish roe on the siew mai ($3.8)! Some of the siew mai that we had at other places only topped with countable amount of fish roe.

At last, the dessert. This pomelo sago in mango juice ($4.6) was sweet and refreshing with the pomelo bursting out the juice in your mouth. However, the color looks kind of  artificially orange. 

Yum Cha provides spacious and comfortable seatings, the set ups are in wooden theme, including the floor. We could feel the wooden floor shaking whenever people walked pass us.

There were waitresses pushing around dim sum on the push cart. In that way, we didn't need to wait long for our food and we could pick our dim sum right in front of us. 

Took a look back when leaving the restaurant. Overall, nice dim sum but a bit pricey.

After lunch, we continued our walk at Chinatown. It was very crowded and we were walking at snail's pace. Chinatown comes alive with the new year songs played in the air and new year charm and goodies sold by the stalls. Red and yellow are auspicious color for Chinese, you can see these color everywhere in Chinatown.

Do you notice that all these preserved food were named in idioms with auspicious meaning?

The festive decorations were up. There are rows of horse-shaped lanterns and gold coins lining up at Chinatown, welcoming the year of horse. The view was even more magnificent at night, where the horses were light up and the gold coins dazzled in the golden yellow lightings.