Don’t be afraid to get the chicken’s feet at Yum Cha CBD: they are a delicious Yum Cha treat! Photo: Michelle Kroll.
Yum Cha is a leisurely, indulgent, gluttonous pleasure best enjoyed with a group of friends who love to eat. Small appetites, laundry lists of dietary requirements and picky eaters need not apply: Yum Cha is not just a meal, it’s an experience.
Yum Cha is a Cantonese tradition of eating dumplings and drinking tea for breakfast, and it has found worldwide popularity. The Yum Cha venues in Sydney and Melbourne are legendary (and rightly so), but Canberra also has some solid options for those wanting that dim sum experience closer to home.
For the uninitiated, go with a friend who knows the score, as the experience can be a bit baffling. Trolleys stacked with bamboo baskets will do the rounds, and you can choose which dishes you’d like. The server will tick them off your bill as you order. Place the lid of your teapot askew and they’ll know you need a refill (endless refills are absolutely necessary) and don’t be afraid to ask for more soy or chilli sauce.
Here are our top three of the best Canberra Yum Cha.
The scholar offers excellent old-school Yum Cha. Photo: Lucy Ridge.
For old-school Yum Cha, The Scholar at Dickson is a favourite for many. Walking up the slightly dingy staircase, you are first confronted by murky tanks filled with lobsters. The large dining room is packed full of large, round tables and chairs with retro fabric coverings.
On weekends the restaurant is busy with groups of families and friends. A busy yum cha restaurant ensures that the carts are regularly refilled, keeping everything hot and fresh. The sticky rice parcels with Chinese pork sausage are particularly good, as are the bean curd rolls filled with prawns. There are several variations of steamed prawn dumplings available – prawn and pork, prawn and chives, prawn and coriander – as well as a tasty pork and peanut dumpling that offers a nice crunch.
Fried white bait comes around frequently, but we have to place a special order for squid, which sadly doesn’t come with the chilli and spring onion we were expecting. Warm fried sesame balls filled with red bean paste are a delicious finish to the meal (although at Yum Cha, you are welcome to go for dessert anytime it rolls around).
The tea is hot, the food is tasty and affordable and the atmosphere is second to none.
There’s a clue in the name; this place is serious about Yum Cha! While others limit their offering to the weekend, Yum Cha CBD offers yum cha for lunch every day and offers an impressive range of dim sum and other traditional yum cha treats.
The chicken feet with umami black bean sauce were deliciously gelatinous, and all the dumplings we had were as fresh and plump as anything! The BBQ pork buns were pillowy soft with a perfectly balanced sweet and sour filling, and the epic crunch of the lobster dumplings surpassed expectations. We shared coconut jelly and mango desserts to finish off the meal with a little freshness.
The trolleys navigated the throng of tables and kept us very well-fed. One of the finest Yum Cha experiences I’ve had in Canberra!
The offerings at Ginseng’s weekend Yum Cha are always solid. Photo: Ginseng/Instagram.
Another popular favourite is this Southside institution at the Hellenic Club, which gets busy on the weekends. The layout of the room sometimes makes it awkward to flag down a trolley but that’s all part of the fun. The fried whitebait and squid were particularly good, and we also enjoyed the siu mai (open pork dumplings).
The Cheong fun steamed rice rolls filled with prawns are a slippery treat, and we also gobbled down fried noodles, Chinese broccoli and spring rolls among the dim sum for variety! The servers made it easy to order extra items and seemed to have a good sense of what we’d like and when we were getting low on food.
The club setting allows you to order drinks at the bar with ease, and the space is light, airy and fairly modern. If you’re southside, Ginseng is a great choice.
Special mention must go to Oh No! in Manuka, which hosts monthly bottomless Yum Cha brunch on a Sunday, which is a lot of fun.
Unlike traditional Yum Cha – where you choose dishes off a trolley – this Yum Cha involves a more traditional ordering structure. The bottomless drinks are also a nice touch!
Jiangnan Talk in Kingston also offers a solid Yum Cha experience on weekends. We visited when they were still quite new so they hadn’t yet built up the critical mass needed for rapid trolley refills, but the food was good and the service friendly. And keep an eye out for Muku Ramen Bar’s occasional vegan yum cha events!
Where have you had your best Yum Cha experience?
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