London is the only place in Europe to have a fully fledged China Town, and as such we can enjoy Yum Cha (lit. drink tea), the southern Chinese/Cantonese style of afternoon tea. When Chinese people say let’s go to Yum Cha it means having dim sum dishes. These are little dishes of food, normally hot and savoury, bite size pieces which you can pick up easily with chopsticks; traditionally the food are usually steamed in bamboo baskets, nowadays there are selections of fried and cold dishes too. Hong Kong is really the ultimate dim sum heaven where having dim sum is a daily affair, the food is cheap, fresh and variety endless.
In my opinion to enjoy dim sum to its fullest, you really need to know how to use the chopstick. Dim sum is made for eating with chopsticks. The second is that dim sum has to be eaten while it is still hot, or at least warm. Once the steamed food turned cold, it is horrible, and it is best to have at least 3 people because each dish contains three or four pieces so with at least 3 people you can share and order more of different dishes.
The above is a typical example of a dim sum meal I had. I have put names to each dish to give you an idea. There are more dishes to come but these were some of the first ones to arrive. We had 6 people that day and we might have ordered a bit too much. However, we did manage to eat it all.
As I mentioned earlier, dim sum have to be eaten while it is still hot. In a traditional dim sum restaurant in Hong Kong, these food baskets would be placed inside a steamed cart. The waitresses push these steamed carts around the restaurant and customers pick out what they want from these carts as they come round so the food is literally pipping hot and no food is wasted as you choose what you want throughout the meal. There used to be one such proper cart dim sum restaurant in London’s china town for a very long time. Unfortunately, it closed down last year (2017) :(. All the other dim sum restaurant I know off, you basically order what you want and eat each dish as and when it comes, while it is hot. Once a dish is emptied, it is cleared to make way for another. You don’t wait for everything to arrive as in western meal because the food will be cold especially that the weather is already much colder here than it is in Asia.
Don’t be surprise if you see dishes such as chicken feet, intestine or tripe or other parts of the animal. This is the Chinese idea of waste not want not. The Chinese will make use of and eat as much of the animal as possible (probably the same in many other parts of the world too). It is amazing that, chicken feet, which is practically all bones can be turned into such delicacy. Take it from me, it is delicious. I order one such dish every time.
It could be hard for anyone not familiar with dim sum to try order some but there are a few restaurants that provide a pictured menu to make it a bit easier. Below is one such menu.
Note these pictured menu doesn’t tell you the price of the dishes. This is because in the last few years prices constantly changing. You need to ask for the accompanying paper menu which has the prices and check it from there. In this particular restaurant you can just point to the dishes you want using the pictured menu. In other restaurants you get a piece of paper with the list of all the dim sum dishes so you indicate which dish you want by putting a tick against each.
Until about 2-3 years ago, it’d cost me approximately £10-12 for a dim sum meal. But now, the same meal would be around £16-18, a jump of about 50%. This is due to the fact everything is more expensive, and also previously, Chinese restaurants in China town don’t have a service charge. Now, a service charge seems to a standard way to increase costs even though I don’t feel service has changed at all.
Here’s a short video of a dim sum meal and a walkabout in London’s China town and Leicester Square.
Goody2shoos travels 