Dimsum, Fish and Noodles

For a while I thought I would leave Hongkong without my dimsum fix. But with a little effort and loads of guts, a couple of lady friends and I found ourselves amidst Hongkong locals in a local Tsing Yi restaurant.

Never has a meal been this amusing.

Though this restaurant was set in a mall, the servers barely speak English which was quite an experience for us. Waiting for our number to be called, I was personally amazed at how this resto was kept full and the turnover was just amazing. It would be a chef's dream business!

It was a late lunch for us three ladies and starving that we were, we were ready for anything, especially dimsum.

This is not your typical Chinese restaurant. When we were called, we found ourselves sharing a 10 seater table with two couples - an elderly couple and the other, two ladies. We were handed 3 leaflets which we assumed was our menu, all in Chinese characters and luckily, one of these had photos. Mind you, there was no English translation at all.


After a few minutes of deliberating what to order, a server brings around 3 tea pots. We assumed it was tea, but no, we found it was just hot water. We stopped ourselves, waited and watched what our seatmates will do with it - they used this to rinse their chopsticks, rice bowls and tea cups. We followed suit.

A second batch of tea pots arrived. This time, it was jasmine tea. Sipping our tea helped ease our fears, I knew then that the meal was going to be fine.

Another server came by to check on what we wanted - all these in a myriad of hand gestures, sign language and a lot of nodding heads just to make a point. We focused our attention on the single flyer with the fotos and started making our choices - all which looked familiar we marked, those that looked peculiar we ignored.

Our server managed to offer and convince us of their special for the day - "fish and noodles" she said. We all nodded in agreement, but had to order one more item since our meal would not be complete without rice. So we mentioned "Yang Chow" and somehow, our wonderful server managed to link it to "Chao Fan". Happily hungry, we waited.

Oh, and have I mentioned how much we wanted to order bottled water? We ended up with Coke instead - it is after all, a universal beverage and the only one they could easily fathom.

So here's what we got:


Our Chao Fan was perfect. This plateful of goodness had a lot of crunchy shrimps, was deliciously fragrant and had a light smokey aroma coming from the infusion of some sesame oil and shallots. Their pork siomai was a biteful of goodness characterized by its perfect texture and flavor that you don't need any more seasonings for it. We were also able to order siao long bao, steamed mini parcels stuffed with pork broth and ground pork mixture.



Remember the "Fish and Noodle" special of the day - well, here's it is, in fried format. We were laughing when we saw this because we were expecting to have a sort of steamed grouper with leeks and soy sauce type of preparation (kind of like Steamed Lapu-Lapu) and instead got this humble fried "galunggong" version. Oh and the noodles did not come out as Pancit or "fried noodles". What we had was "noodle soup", quite similar to chicken noodle soup (see photo above).



For me, nothing beats hongkong style siopao. I absolutely love these sticky sweet and savory steamed buns. What we got were stuffed with chicken and chives.



Imagine molo balls served with light soy sauce and chilies. These pebbles were stuffed with ground pork and some shrimps.


We also got a few sweet items from the menu, particularly this mochi stuffed with sweet red bean paste. They also offer an empanada format with fried flaky dough similar to our "kaliskis" empanadas which is stuffed with the same filling.




So you think we finished it all?