Yum Cha at Emperor's Garden in Chinatown, Sydney

I'm always up for good dim sum, because it's not that easy to find in Manila. Here in Sydney, you will find dim sum in Chinese restaurants offering "yum cha". At first, I thought that yum cha was simply another name for dim sum, but after some quick googling, I discovered that dim sum (literally "touch the heart") refers to the food itself, while yum cha (Cantonese slang for "drinking tea") refers to the custom of eating small servings of different kinds of food while drinking tea. So, as I understand it, you eat dim sum at yum cha.

Anyway, my friend Kate has a cousin based here named Cel, and she was kind enough to show me the sights by bringing me on a Sydney Explorer tour. The bus tour has 27 stops (each one at a Sydney landmark), and it's up to you when to get off. A bus passes by each stop every 20 minutes, so you can go down wherever you want and be assured of a ride to your next destination. One of the stops was Chinatown, and Cel and I went down there when it was nearly lunchtime. It was also a good place to go shopping, but that's another story.

Fried Shrimp and Scallop Dumplings

Cel brought me to Emperor's Garden Seafood Restaurant, and I was excited to see they had yum cha. The sight of the servers going around pushing trolleys laden with dim sum was enough to make me even hungrier. I ordered some Ha Kao (shrimp dumplings), which I love and never get tired of, some prawn and vegetable dumplings, and fried shrimp and scallop dumplings. I'm always happy to discover new kinds of dim sum, and in this case, I was glad to chance upon those fried dumplings, the kind of which I'd never tried before. Cel and I also had some Chinese broccoli, which we didn't finish, unfortunately. Not because it wasn't good; we were just too full from everything else we'd already eaten.

I love Sydney. I haven't had one bad meal here yet.

Prawn and Vegetable Dumplings


Emperor's Garden Seafood Restaurant
Level 2 Corner Dixon and Hay Street
Haymarket NSW 2000
Tel: (02)9211.2135
Fax: (02)9281.2251

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