Indi­vid­ual Tea Set — $1/person

It’s about time that I write a post about one of my favourite Chi­nese foods, Dim Sum! They are like lit­tle delec­table trea­sures. Some say that they are the essence of Can­tonese Cui­sine — I agree to some extent.

My fam­ily and I love Yum Cha (usu­ally a week­end brunch), so we are always look­ing out for good restau­rants that serves up deli­cious Dim Sum. Clay­pot Restau­rant is a hot pot restau­rant located on Alexan­dra Road, known as the ‘Food Street’ of Rich­mond. We’ve never tried their hot pot before but we finally vis­ited this restau­rant for Dim Sum, and we were sur­prised by the qual­ity and fresh­ness of their food.

How can you have Yum Cha with­out a good cup of tea? After we sat down, we were asked what kind of tea we would like to drink and it turned out they have a good vari­ety of Chi­nese teas. They offer indi­vid­ual tea sets for those who like to have self-serve brewed teas or you could also have them brew a pot to share (like what most restau­rants do). Not many restau­rants have this ser­vice and I per­son­ally enjoy it but I know some find it too much work.

Dim Sum Menu

They cur­rently have a daily $1 (great deal) Dim Sum spe­cial in cel­e­bra­tion of their one year anniver­sary. We went on a Sat­ur­day so we had the Steamed Beef Meat Balls.

Steamed Beef Meat Balls — $1 (spe­cial priced)

I nor­mally don’t enjoy this dish too much because it is some­times too soft and it feels like you are eat­ing some mys­tery meat. But it was pretty good, not too soft and had good beef flavour, it came steam­ing hot.

Steamed Veg­gie and Shrimp Dumpling — $3.98

This is always one of my favourites because I like the dif­fer­ent tex­tures. There was so much fill­ing and the wrap­per wasn’t too soft and it was a bit chewy the way I like it. The veg­gies in the fill­ing were crunchy and tasty.

Pan Fried Chive and Shrimp Dumpling — $3.98

This was tasty as well, the shrimp was fresh and the chives had a good flavour. It would be even bet­ter if they were more crispy.

Steamed Chi­nese Sausage Roll — $4.68

This is one of the older style Dim Sum dishes, so it is not served in many restau­rants. It is sort of like a Chi­nese hot dog. I liked that it had enough sausage in it because I’ve had some that had a lot of bun and not enough sausage.

Steamed Egg Tofu with Shrimp and Herbs — $3.98

This actu­ally tasted bet­ter than it looked. The brown strands are a kind of Chi­nese herb (don’t know what it is called in Eng­lish) that doesn’t have a very strong flavour. It was a steamed egg tofu topped with shrimp balls, herbs, and fin­ished with a sauce. This is good for those who want to go for some­thing lighter — it had mild flavours but still good with­out too much grease.

Rice Roll with Crispy Fish Fill­ing — $5.38

Kirin Seafood Restau­rant makes this dish too and does a good job. It was basi­cally a crispy deep fried fish paste wrapped in a bean curd sheet and rolled in a thin steamed rice noo­dle sheet. This tasted a lit­tle dif­fer­ent here (in a good way) because they added diced squid into the fish paste so there was another tex­ture. The inside was still nice and crispy when it came to the table.

Hot Pot Setup

The only thing that I found not so con­ve­nient was the hot pot stoves in the mid­dle of each table so you have to place things around the stove and have to move them around if you are eat­ing in a large group.

Good food but not too expensive

Shu Mai Dumpling with Quail Eggs

We went another time and had this. I think this was sup­posed to be a retro dish as well. It was like the reg­u­lar Shu Mai Dumpling topped with a quail egg — yummy.

BBQ Pork Pastry

We also tried their pas­try. They did a good job of this too — so but­tery and flaky.

I def­i­nitely enjoyed the fresh, made-to-order dishes as well as their indi­vid­ual tea sets. This one of the few hot pot restau­rants that also serves good Dim Sum. Over­all, we had a good Yum Cha expe­ri­ence there, and would like to go back for more.

Con­clu­sion:

Ambi­ence: 3/5
Food: 4/5
Ser­vice: 3.5/5
Value: 4/5