Monday, October 31, 2005

Yum Yum Sum Sum

To celebrate our first meeting seven years ago this weekend, Peggy and I went to Yum Cha in the CBD today. Yum Cha is the equivalent of Dim Sum back home, but Dim Sum being a smaller component of the larger experience of Yum Cha. In western terms, Dim Sum would be ingredient of eggs and Yum Cha would be the meal, breakfast.

I've always held an aversion to unregulated commercial food consumption, due to the fact that I usually get summarily stuffed less than five minutes into the affair. All-You-Can-Eat buffets and Sushi Boat restaurants being the main offenders. More so the latter of the two, which falls into the Dim Sum category of not requiring the guest to have to stand up before consume further quantities.

Waistlines be damned, to the Sky Phoenix we went (with Thomas) for a pork-filled Sunday brunch. The Yum Cha cart ladies were really quite funny, especially when asked to explain the difference between Dim Sum and Yum Cha. After a few tries, we pieced together a composite answer to our question. I also pondered whether or not the cart driving ladies worked on commission, per dish peddled, or just worked as a flat rate. We had a hard time thinking of creative ways to tell them 'no', we didn’t want the mushroom sticky buns or prawn and spinach dumplings.

Peggy also dubbed the Yum Cha / Dim Sum experience as 'the worst place to let your toddler run amok', given that there are dozens of Chinese women narrowly intertwining the aisles with large metal carts, each one packed full of enough bean curd to knock at least a few years off a child's life.

posted by ncawthon at 4:57 AM