How can you leave Hong Kong without having Dim Sum 點心?

Dim sum 點心 is a Cantonese term that involves small individual portions of food, usually served in a small steamer basket or on a small plate. Going for dim sum is usually known in Cantonese as going to "drink tea" (yum cha, 飲茶). The word yum cha, is also the name of Adeline Grattard's restaurant in Paris, which is fitting for her contemporary Cantonese cuisine. 

The drinking of tea is as important to dim sum as the food. A popular tea which is said to aid in digestion is bolay (puli), which is a strong, fermented tea.  Oolong (wu lung) and Jasmine tea can be served as well. It is customary to pour tea for others during dim sum before filling one's own cup. A custom unique to the Cantonese is to thank the person pouring the tea by tapping the bent index finger if you are single, or by tapping both the index and middle finger if you are married, which symbolizes 'bowing' to them.

Traditional dim sum is eaten for breakfast, brunch or afternoon tea, as part of the yum cha experience. My grandmother for example, comes to her favorite dim sum restaurant as early as 7.30 am! Dim Sum includes various types of steamed buns such as char siu baau, dumplings and rice noodle rolls (cheong fun), which contain a range of ingredients, including beef, chicken, pork, prawns and vegetarian options or fried items. The serving sizes are usually small (compare to Spanish tapas size) and normally served as three or four pieces in one dish. It is customary to order family style, sharing dishes among all members of the dining party. Because of the small portions, people can try a wide variety of food - and we did!

Many dim sum restaurants also offer plates of steamed green vegetables, roasted meats, congee porridge and other soups. Dessert dim sum is also available and many places offer the customary egg tart. 

Dim sum dishes can be ordered from a menu or sometimes the food is wheeled around on a trolley by servers (I love the latter). 

I thought as my final lunch meal in Hong Kong before I jet off to Paris, why not have Dim Sum, something that represents Hong Kong cuisine at its best. For dim sum, I tend to stick to the very local venues, and coincidentally convened with my grandmother on a Sunday, where usually families get together to have dim sum anyways.

The restaurant we went to is called Foo Lum, and is located in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. Here's only a glimpse of what Dim Sum has to offer...

A view from the escalator

Braised chicken feet 鳳爪 Fung Zao: marinated in a black bean sauce and then steamed

腐皮捲 Fu Pei guen: Tofu skin roll with shrimp

Donut sticks wrapped in noodle (Za leung)

蝦 餃 (Har gau): steamed dumpling with whole or chopped-up shrimp filling and thin wheat starch skin

燒賣 siu mai: steamed dumplings with pork and prawns topped off with crab roe and mushroom.

                                        

 鹹水角 Haam Sui Gaau:  fried oval-shaped dumpling made with rice-flour and filled with pork and chopped vegetables. The rice-flour surrounding is sweet and sticky, while the inside is slightly salty

     

Steamed meatball (牛肉球): Finely-ground beef is shaped into balls and then steamed nd served on top of a thin bean-curd skin. My ultimate favorite!!!!

Lotus leaf rice (糯米雞 lou mai gai): Glutinous rice wrapped in a lotus leaf; contains egg yolk, dried scallop, mushroom, water chestnut and meat (usually pork and chicken) that are steamed with the rice.  

Char siu baau 叉燒包: steamed bun with a Cantonese barbecued pork filling

And the traditional stamp receipt at the end and...voila! In a local restaurant, aim to pay around 200 - 250$ HKD.

Hong Kong, I miss you!

Tsui Wah 翠華餐廳

Happy New Year!!!! I hope you all had a wonderful countdown with family and friends and wishing you all a prosperous 2011! As always, the only thing I want to talk about is...food.


A trip to Hong Kong would not be complete without joining the locals (and I mean all locals - from celebrities, business tycoons and just your average Hong Kong-er) and ordering milk tea and a meal from an extensive menu from this 'institution', Tsui Wah 翠華. While there are many branches in town, the Central branch, open 24 hours, has become the place for breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner AND late night food after a long night out. There's always a crowd in this restaurant at every time of the day....ALWAYS.
The restaurant offers 3 levels of seating, so during a working day lunch hour, you may wait a bit but then up having a table with a local - normal proceedings at Tsui Wah and any local Chinese diner. 


Tsui Wah is one of Hong Kong's most well-loved char chan tengs 茶餐廳 (Chinese tea diner commonly found in Hong Kong). A note about Char chan tengs...

Char Chan Teng provide tea (usually weak tea) called "clear tea" (清茶 cing cha), to customers as soon as they are seated. It is also very common to use the heat to wash your utensils (this is will appear like an insult...) The name, literally "tea restaurant", serves to distinguish itself from Western restaurants that provide water to customers instead of tea. The "tea" in the name refers to the inexpensive black tea, not the traditional Chinese tea served in traditional dim sum restaurants and teahouses. 

Cha chaan teng serves a wide range of food. Both fast food and à-la-carte dishes are available. A big cha chaan teng often consists of three cooking places: a "water bar" (水吧) which makes drinks, toast/sandwiches and instant noodles, a "noodle stall", and a kitchen for producing rice plates and other more expensive dishes. 

Customers usually select their seats freely in a cha chaan teng, but in a crowded restaurant they may be given the choice of sharing a table with strangers. During peak hours, waiters in a char chan teng will seat their customers, "packing" as many customers into the restaurant as possible. In most char chan tengs, customers call out their orders to a waiter, who will jot down the prices of the ordered food 

Tsui Wah has branches all over Hong Kong, so you should have no problem finding it. This well established char chan teng is known to be open 24 hours, even during typhoons! The range of dishes served in this char chan teng will amaze, but perhaps the most amazing part is that none of the dishes has ever failed to satisfy. Locals come here, not for the service or decor but for the food. An extensive menu (shown underneath the glass table) offers a range of dishes from classic Fish ball with noodle, Chinese Fried Rice, Hainan Chicken Rice, to Japanese Udon Noodle and Indian curry - retouched to HK taste of course. This is as close as you can come to Chinese comfort food - all at very reasonable prices. 

Drinks are also varied here including the famous 'Lai-Cha' tea with evaporated milk, ice lemon tea and ice coffee. During special holidays, you'll encounter seasonal creations such as Marshmallow with Sesame Ice-cream or herbal jelly on ice. 
Everyone finds something they like to eat at Tsui Wah so don't be intimidated by the huge neon-lights and the hecticness of the restaurant. Trust me, this place has to be visited at least one time. 


During my short trip back to Hong Kong, I went to Tsui Wah A LOT as much as I could to show you the variety of food, but there's just so much and I couldn't display everything. So here's just a preview of what they offer, obviously there are many other great dishes that I didn't get to capture too... 


Tsui Wah in Central

I even have their t-shirt! :) I do love Tsui Wah

All restaurants provide the extensive menu literally underneath your table.

                              

Soft Pork bone..one of my favorites. The meat falls off the bone, is very tasty and tender so melts in your mouth.

You can even have it with Chive dumplings in Fish soup

Hands down to their fish soup stock. In this particular soup, the gravy of the pork bone adds a dimension to the fish soup that I really love, which is also why the soup acquires a brownish hue. Another topping that I love (not pictured) is fish skin dumplings (yu pei gao), essentially pork dumplings wrapped in a skin made of fish paste. 

Their famous ice-tea - keeps you up and running all day (the ice coffee even more so!)

Fish Ball and fish cake with noodle. My mom orders this EVERY TIME she comes here (3 times a week at least?) and never changes, NEVER. As a local, you tend to stick to what you love, and Tsui Wah makes this the best!

Pineapple Bun with Iced Butter. You basically place the thick slice of butter served on ice inside the bun and bite! Don't forget to get yourself one of their very famous iced coffees too!

Crispy Condensed Milk Bun: toasted bun with butter topped with condensed milk

A normal breakfast: macaroni soup with ham and abalone, with 2 eggs

Some vegetables too...Gau Choy Fa (Flowering chives)

Soya sauce chicken wings (a great afternoon snack)

Crispy noodle with King Prawns. The noodle served is crispy and soft at the same time (from the sauce). It's a great combination.

You can also have the same noodles with vegetables and mushrooms

So that's a just a LITTLE preview of the extensive menu Tsui Wah offers. Like I said, you'll have to try it to understand how GREAT this restaurant is and understand why Hong Kong people who live abroad and come back to the island, come to this restaurant as soon as they get back!


Main Branch...


Tsui Wah Restaurant 

翠華餐廳

15D-19 Wellington St., Central
Tel: 2525-6338
Subway Station: Central
Website: www.tsuiwahrestaurant.com

Chuk Yuen Seafood Restaurant 竹園

Chuk Yuen Seafood Restaurant 竹園 has been around for a very long time, with a second branch in Tsim Sha Tsui on Kowloon side. My parents have been going to this restaurant for more than 20 years and I probably have been going since I was 5. This is a local seafood restaurant that serves great fish and seafood at reasonable prices and generous portions. Unlike Sun Tung Lok which has 3-Michelin stars, I believe Chuk Yuen deserves praise for the maintenance of its standard of seafood. There's nothing fancy in the decor of the restaurant, which holds about 100 people, but it serves good food, and I think that's what really counts and I believe it deserves more praise.

Upon entering the restaurant, you are ushered to the fish tanks to order your meal. Sure, you can order from the menu but for fish and seafood you get to point out what you want. There's a variety of seafood: the fish are in the top tank, then lobster, crayfish and shrimp, as well as clams, crabs and even frog. All of them still alive and ready to be cooked right away.

The fish we ordered, still swimming and jumping about...as fresh as it gets!

To start off...

Fried baby fish

Deep fried tofu with garlic

We ordered a bunch of seafood; all of them hot and steaming from the kitchen and with great taste!


Fried crayfish with garlic


The meat was succulent and there were a lot of eggs. Yum!

Clam with garlic and vermicelli noodle


The clam is steamed and served with minced garlic and scallions with vermicelli noodle and a little clam sauce. Simple and fresh. 

Whole Lobster with cheese and baked rice noodle


Yes, that's right I said Cheese. This is probably the only times you'll find cheese with a seafood, and Chuk Yuen is the place to serve it; at least it's the original place that started it all. A lot of people have come to this restaurant thinking it's a weird combination and refusing to try it, but to be honest, once they try a piece, they want more. True fact! I don't even like Cheese but this combination is THE BEST. 

Fresh pea sprouts 

Steamed fish in soya sauce with scallion and herbs


In every Chinese meal you have, you will order a fish dish, typically steamed fish in soya sauce. The meat was very sweet and tender and melted in your mouth.

We finish off with complimentary desserts. Typically, Cantonese restaurants end the meal with a fruit platter among other desserts.


Fresh fruit (Orange and Dragon fruit slices)

Mango Pudding (a very typical and popular dessert in Hong Kong. It consists of agar or gelatin, fresh mangoes, evaporated milk and sugar giving it a creamy texture. It is typically served cold). 

Za-za: stewed sweet mix beans (red and green) with milk. 

Steamed rice cake, Bak Tong Gou 

白糖糕 

- A typical Chinese sweet sugar sponge cake

Tofu Fa 豆腐花

- one of my favorite desserts (along with many locals) made from soya bean and sweetened with rock sugar; like a bean curd custard

Did I mention that along with dinner you get free beer, and soft drinks including orange juice and sugarcane juice. Not a bad bargain at all.


My parents bring a lot of their visiting friends to this restaurant for good Cantonese style seafood and so far all of them have enjoyed their time and their meal here.
For anyone coming to visit Hong Kong, I recommend this restaurant and especially the Lobster with the Cheese; it's definitely a dish worth trying for once in your life!


Chuk Yuen Seafood Restaurant 竹園
G/F, 7-9 Wong Nai Chung Road, Happy Valley 
Tel: 2893 8293