It was Dragon Boat Festival a while back, so by tradition, I had to spend the day with family. Especially during lunch time, a very popular thing to do during chinese festivals is to have chinese tea/ yum cha with family for lunch.Here is a restaurant chain our family frequently go to, Lei Gardens/利苑, a place with a reputation of quality and authenticity. It's a little more expensive than the usual yum cha places, but its definitely worth the money for its freshness and its stubbornness to use the highest quality of materials for every dish it makes. This place is sadly a great example on how much dim sum has fallen in quality in other restaurants over the years.
The kitchen starts operating around 6am every morning, as many chinese dishes require alot of cooking time, especially chinese soup. The chef only cooks a limited number of each dish everyday, to ensure that the quality is consistent, everything is made from fresh ingredients and not leftovers from previous night. So kinda a pain in the ass sometimes as the place usually run out of food by the afternoon.
The average chinese family's dim sum table, with many culinary treasures scattered across the table cloth. This review is to point out specialities that you typically won't get in other dim sum joints. Btw, that weirdly coloured dish in the middle is the burnt rice from the 煲仔飯, not very proper dim sum, but it was filling.
First off, 糭子 or Chinese tamale as they call it in English. Its a traditional thing to eat during Dragon Boat Festival, kinda like a rice dumpling with different content wrapped inside. Not going to go into details on why we eat it, for those who don't know wikipedia is your friend. This one is a 碱水糭, sort of like a dumpling made out of glutonous rice, with a red bean paste inside. The rice is soaked in alkaline water, making it look yellow, and the 糭 is dipped in sugar before each bite. A good dish to eat once in a while, its not amazing in taste, and only eaten during festival time.
This dimsum is worth introducing. 皇棗糕/Red Dates Cake, a long lost cantonese dim sum according to my dad (not a very good source, but a source none the less). It used to be a common dim sum served in restaurants 'back in the days' and was slowly forgotten over time. Fortunely, the chefs in Lei Garden kept the receipe and decided to revive it recently. Its very mochi, with a light sweet and sour taste of red dates, and is usually eatten last as a dessert. Definitely worth a try for people who likes dim sum.
This is the main course for me, and usually the highlight of my week. It is probably my most favourite dish in the worlddd, and nothing can compare to it. A nice bowl of 老火湯 or 'Old Fire Soup'. A soup that has its ingredients cooked under a very slow flame for hours (hence the name 'old fire' soup), the chef has to wake up in the morning to place in ingredients in this pressure cooking urn. After a few hours, the ingredients will begin to dissolve into the soup under the heat and the pressure, releasing this amazing fragrance. Don't let the colour of the soup fool you, every sip of this soup will give you an explosion of flavors in your mouth, as if you ate all the soup ingredients in one spoon full. Lei Garden rotates the ingredients of the soup every week, so its always something different in every vist. It varies from simple materials such as chicken, carrots, shellfish to even Crocidile. Watch out though, due to its popularity Lei Garden usually runs out of 老火湯 by 1pm, so I advise booking one in advance. Forget Campbell Soup bull crap, this is the REAL DEAL.Final Verdict: 老火湯 WTF? GO TRY NOW! I SAID ITS THE BEST DISH IN THE WORLD! WHY ARE YOU STILL SITTING THERE?
P.S. Did I mention the Lei Garden chain won one star on the Michelin Guide? Even those snobby frenchmen couldnt resist the amazing dimsum and 老火湯 here, hehehe.
http://www.openrice.com/restaurant/sr2.htm?shopid=1860
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