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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
