I recently went to a yum cha in Sydney with my friend Happy, who’s from the Philippines. She’d never been to yum cha before in Australia and I felt a huge sense of responsibility to use my 30-something years of yum cha experience to make hers the best first time ever.
It began when I suggested we meet at 10:30am to avoid the queues.
You might have already decided in that act alone that I’m no fun to have yum cha with. “Weekends are for sleeping in!” you might protest. “Dim sum are for lunch!” you might reason. But I will do anything to avoid lining up for food, plus 10:30am is not so early when you consider the fact that yum cha opens as early as 6am in Hong Kong.
If you do have to line up for anything, though, yum cha is pretty worth it.
A few months ago I stood in a yum cha queue at lunchtime that was about eight metres long. We estimated we were about 20 minutes away from our first har gau (prawn dumpling) and it was enough of a carrot (prawn dumpling) for this donkey (me).
Once I sat down with my friend Happy and her husband Kerwin, I soon learned there’s loads of Chinese food in the Philippines, and even though she’d never been to something called “yum cha”, she was familiar with many yum cha dishes from eating them at special Chinese banquets called lauriats.
So, to her so far, yum cha simply meant no sleep-in.
Because I was a few minutes late, Happy and Kerwin had already ordered tea for the table, which meant they were able to avoid listening to a Tea Talk presentation I had prepared: pu’er is dark and flavourful, jasmine is great for something lighter and more floral, ti kuan yin has a flavour that’s in between pu’er and jasmine, and pu’er with chrysanthemum means you get both an earthy and floral flavour.
But there was little time to dwell on this because a trolley lady was already at our table. “Eggplant?” she asked. I looked at Happy and Kerwin to see how interested they were in braised eggplant stuffed with fish mince and tofu stuffed with fish mince.
They were interested.
So I, as the person sitting closest to the trolley, said “Yes, please.” And in that moment I realised … perhaps that was the extent of the yum cha knowledge I needed to pass on to Happy. She’s very bright, and really, maybe that’s all one needs to know about yum cha. The food comes around: you say yes or no.
Sure, I could explain all the different groups of dumplings and small dishes and exhort her to plan carefully so she could curate a pleasing diversity of foods which are steamed, fried and baked.
But I’d already deprived her of a good two hours’ sleep on a Saturday, and what better way for someone to experience yum cha than just to say yes or no to whatever comes along? Much better than a mini lecture on each dish from me.
My decision to hold back on the knowledge-sharing did require some quick psychological footwork, though. It meant I had to accept I would no longer be sharing my views that yum cha is an ecosystem that thrives when the most decisive and assertive person at each table sits closest to the trolleys.
It certainly isn’t the funnest take on yum cha, to suggest that people should install a leader at each table to enable the smooth flow of traffic which would maximise the likelihood of food maintaining its freshness as it made its way around the restaurant.
It also sounded like I was trying to be elected leader of the table, and this wasn’t the time for that (the time for that is at a much larger table, when the leadership position holds far greater power).
Nor was this the time to share my views that some dishes just shouldn’t be ordered at yum cha. Like edamame (not Chinese; a waste of $7). Or xiaolongbao (soup dumplings) that have come to you by trolley (they’re Shanghainese, not Cantonese; they should only ever travel directly from the kitchen to your table so the soup inside stays hot). Or barbecue meats (always marked up a lot; get them from your local barbecue meats place instead and stick to barbecue pork buns at yum cha).
No, this was not a time to say no.
It was a first time, and a time to say yes. Yes to fried taro dumplings, har gau, pan-fried radish cake, barbecue pork cheung fun (steamed rice paper rolls) and freshly blanched Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce. Yes to barbecue pork served with mustard; yes to pan-fried cheung fun; yes to egg tarts.
OK, so we ate hardly any steamed dim sum. We did not begin, as Kerwin did when he was a child, with six bamboo steamers plonked on the table. And to Happy’s disappointment, there were no deep-fried sesame dough balls filled with black sesame.
But you can’t really do yum cha wrong. And there’s always next time. Which is perhaps the best takeaway of all.
• Jennifer Wong is a writer, comedian and presenter of Chopsticks or Fork? on ABC iView
