Is it bad if your waiter stops you from ordering more food because he thinks you have ordered too much already? That was precisely what happened when we had yum cha at Luk Yu Teahouse with my father-in-law and his family during their visit to Hong Kong a few weeks ago. Mind you, we already had eaten a fair number of dim sum dishes when we tried to ( Read more... )

I had never thought yum cha could be a fine dining affair until I came to Hong Kong. It's something about dim sum eating - in the old-fashioned sense where trolleys of bamboo baskets containing various bite-sized goodies are pushed around the noisy dining floor with waitresses yelling out their trolley's contents - that doesn't quite fit into the ( Read more... )

Over the past few weeks, we've had a few opportunities to experience the various types of food offered by the Cantonese cuisine in Hong Kong. There was bad service but amazing dim sum at Luk Yu Teahouse, upmarket dining but fairly unremarkable dishes at Lei Garden, and seriously cheap grub at Kwun Chung Market.

Luk Yu Teahouse, Stanley Street ( ( Read more... )

Finding places to eat at any time of the day (or night) in Hong Kong is no problem as the restaurants here cater to the general habit of eating 5 meals a day.

Yum cha @ Graces Garden

Yum cha is a popular option for meals from the early hours of the morning until late afternoon, however there are more and more places in HK offering all-day dim ( Read more... )

One of the great things we love about Hong Kong is that although it is a typical big city with crowded streets, traffic jams and high rises everywhere in sight, there are beautiful and spacious green public areas to be found in the midst of this concrete jungle. The Hong Kong Park in Central provides a lovely respite away from the buzz of Hong Kong ( Read more... )

We arrived in Hong Kong late on Friday night, and after having too little sleep that night, we hopped on the ferry on Saturday morning with Rob's aunt C and her husband L to check out Discovery Bay, a nice residential area on Lantau Island, It's a 30-minute ferry ride from the pier at Central, and without these two lovely people, we would have not ( Read more... )

It's been awhile since everyone last ate dimsum, and one of my friends from Perth, also living in Tokyo, expressed her dismay at not being able to find any good Chinese food in Tokyo. It's true - as I've said it before, and I've said it so many times already - there may be a lot of restaurants in Tokyo serving Chinese food, but it is a hit-and-miss ( Read more... )

On our last weekend in NYC, we met up with Michael, whom we lunched with two times on our previous trip to NYC. We went to Red Egg, which is a rather curious name for a dimsum restaurant. A few reviews of the restaurant seem to indicate that this is a rather pricey option for dimsum, but most agree that the food is pretty good and quite authentic. ( Read more... )

I've often despaired over the lack of good authentic Chinese food in Japan. So when my friend Shan, who is also a Chinese Aussie, raved about the dimsum that she'd had at Hong Kong Tea House in Roppongi Hills, I got excited. Now, as much as Rob and I hate joining the throngs of gaijins (foreigners) in Roppongi simply because of the facts that a) it ( Read more... )

We stopped by our fave Aussie city Sydney for a couple of days at the beginning of our trip to visit my two sisters and nephew. First thing we ate was dimsum (yumcha), complete with the oh(not)-so-hospitable service of a Hongki (nickname for Hong Kong people). Indeed, Rob relished each bite. The food was typically sodium-laden and greasy, bringing ( Read more... )