We hadn't been to Yum Cha in what was I think the longest time ever, so, yes, glad I was when told that this afternoon we would be having high tea buffet there.
Yum Cha has been, to me, one of three places that automatically come to mind whenever I think of having dim sum on the island. That doesn't mean that I don't like the others. It just means that I tend to be more selective than I used to be.
That being said, I'm quite happy with a char siew bao from the coffee shop.
Or a lor mai kai.
Perhaps that's why a buffet like this makes a special occasion for me.
Amongst some of our regular favorites there were a couple of new dishes on the menu this time, so we decided we'd give them a try.
One of the new dishes was this little basket of spinach skin-wrapped siew mais. To be honest it was really like the regular siew mais that we always order, except that instead of the yellow skin surrounding the meat, you get green colored skin instead. I'm not sure if I could taste the spinach (maybe someone with more sensitive taste buds would be able to) but the color definitely zhnged up the regular siew mais a little bit.
The other dish that we thought was unusual were these tangerine shaped balls.
At first I'd thought they were sweet potato balls- I mean, from the looks of it they seemed to be like those deep-fried snack balls that are popular in Taiwan and Thailand and on the island you can go to Maxwell Market to buy.
But as it turned out (if I'm not wrong) they were cuttlefish balls.
Now, how they managed to coat, and make these balls such a cheerful shade of orange, I don't know, but they were pretty to look at, and nice to eat.
There was, too, this basket of little pieces that were what I used to call 'Money Bag' when a child. A 'Money Bag' is called simply because it looks like one, and basically is a piece of pastry wrapped around a ball of meat, tied with a tiny little bit of pandan leaf strip, then deep fried.
There were also a couple of other unusual dishes that we ordered this afternoon.
There was a basket of charcoal black truffle har gow that looked like had been sprinkled with gold dust. I'm not sure what the charcoal black does, but there was a slight hint of truffle in the skin, and it went very well with the prawn inside.
There was a basket of siew mais that I thought had been fried with the same kind of batter that were on the yew kok yam puffs, and which were really nice tasting.
And then there was the basket of deep fried puffs that had been wrapped in the sort of pastry that falls like snowflakes every time you take a bite, and which you have to afterwards scoop up with a spoon.
I don't think we ordered very much after that, save for this little plate of fried carrot radish cake that, done this way, turned out to be hot and crisp and crunchy both inside and out.
