In My Shoes

Usual morning coffee- today’s was at Ray’s Cafe in Brunswick.

we sat inside, but he just wanted a picture of the exterior

He was telling me how he had been wanting to visit Little Ox for the past few weeks, and I suggested to go early tomorrow morning before service, but he said otherwise:

V: Let’s go with a bunch of friends, like to farewell A since she’s going away next week.
S: What are you talking about? She’ll be coming back in like 4 days. 
V: Oh. 

He thought she was going away for more than a month. Bimbo moments like these happen from time to time, and it injects some humour in the relationship. Though I’m glad it’s not at my expense! Ha.

On a totally different note, I love yum cha, and it’s funny that I only ever yum cha in Melbourne and not in Singapore where it’s probably cheaper. Then again, I don’t know any yum cha places back home, except the one my extended dad’s family had for reunion lunch earlier this year.

Dragon Boat Palace on Lonsdale St offers an All You Can Eat Yum Cha for $22 pp on weekends, and I think $16.80 on weekdays. 

We were a bit lazy to take photos of all the individual dishes plus my hair wasn’t in its greatest state, hence there’s only 2 pics of our entire yum cha experience.

first wave - crispy tofu skin with prawn, eggplant, siew mai, scallop rice rolls, prawn dumplings, beef balls

desserts - mango puddings,3 jellys (coconut, strawberry and the really colourful one), sweet beancurd, and some other beancurd with fruit

This is my first experience at an all you can eat yum cha which comes in the push carts. The only other one (besides the made-to-order reunion lunch @ Marina Mandarin Hotel) was a self-service buffet, so it didn’t really feel like a ’sit down and choose from the cart’ yum cha session.

We ordered heaps of food, I dare say this is the most I’ve ever eaten at a yum cha. I think the beauty of all you can eat yum cha is that you are more willing to try so much more without thinking of the cost. Usually when we go for yumcha, there’s only a handful that we order because it’s our favourites. Today we ordered at least 23 dishes (from what I counted on the circled sheet, but not all of them circled the items). 

Overall, it was a good experience in terms of the variety they had and the speed of service. The last time we went there for yum cha some time last year or so was quite a bad one, because service was poor and food wasn’t good. But when we went at noon today, there were lots of push carts going around and that’s why we were hit by so many in the first wave (we usually only have 2 or 3 on the table at one time). 

As for quality of food, most of the dumpling skins were too thick (had to scoop out the contents most of the time) especially the scallop rice roll. Other disappointments included my favourite stuffed eggplant (not the one in the pic), which was not as flavourful as other places I’ve been, and many of the dumplings were quite dry. There were some nice surprises like the crispy skin tofu with prawn, the century egg congee and one of the pork rolls. This is a personal thing, but I wished they had the milk with the mango pudding.

Special (unhonourable) mention goes to the colourful jelly (in the pic) not because it tasted nice, but because it really surprised us. Firstly, when I tried to use my spoon to scoop a portion, my spoon just slid off the surface and I just couldn’t cut it. Of course I did eventually, when I really steadied my spoon and exerted more force usually required to split a piece of jelly. And then, when I ate it, it had the most solid tasteless texture, I just couldn’t bear to eat anymore of it.

S: (poking the really springy colourful jelly) This is like the mother of all jellies.
V: It’s an industrial strength jelly.

For some reason, I was very amused and spat out bits of beancurd that I had just put in my mouth. On hindsight, it really isn’t that funny, but we both had a good laugh.

Great day out today. Ok, back to study time!