Yum Yum CHA

A few weeks ago when going to the beach with some lovely friends of mine. Julia mentioned a yum cha place called Crystal Jade that is apparently pretty good yum cha. This may be a chain from Singapore, but I'm not too sure if it is simply a case of same name syndrome. Regardless, I thought of trying it.

I had been looking forward to Yum Cha at the Crystal Jade all week! (Cnr of Lt Bourke x Russell St, just beyond the nab bank and upstairs). We had our sitting at 1 :15 so there was no rushing around early in the morning because people forgot to curl their hair or neglected to wake up.

The place offers yum cha all day and I'm 90% sure everyday. But I think you'd have to book. It was busy when we first went in but not entirely full - so it'd be safe to book if you have a larger group.

Another quick note, the night before when I was having a few drinks at a friend's place before going to have a dance - my friend Mika told me that this place orders pretty top quality foods from the company that he works at. While quite small, it is always good to know the food you're eating is of good quality - because taste is never an indicator of this. I will also add in that the place that orders the lowest quality foods from them is none other than the famed Vue de Monde! I was shocked beyond all reason. But then at the same time - it doesn't mean the food they order is bad - this a company after all that sorts out food for eateries of all kinds, I'm sure even their lowest quality foods wouldn't be terrible. But it's interesting to keep it in mind. Having eaten at the lovely Vue de Monde before, I found the food absolutely amazing - so maybe a really good artist of the culinary doesn't need the top quality cuts/ingredients we'd all imagine them to require.

Sorry enough about that. But I wanted to let you all know about this often overlooked dimension to eating out.

Now we went upstairs, prompt service, lots of waiters around - if they weren't pushing trolleys they were tending to tables for drinks or other requests. Well there was no service drought. And something else, the service was quite decent I found. Sometimes you may notice that yum cha service can be slightly robotic and even challenging getting the attention of that elusive trolley person with the prawn noodle you want so badly. But this was orderly and in some cases quite humorous as one of the trolley girls joked around about me ordering everything that came along. There was also consistent explanation of things coming along. A very smart move, business wise. You should never assume your customers know everything they are eating, so be prepared to explain what it is.

That they did, and it probably accounted for 40% of the things we ordered. Upon finding out, we were enticed.

You have the usual suspects coming along. The Sui Mai was very good. I don't usually go ga ga for it but I quite enjoyed its moistness and delicate flavour.

Also I'm going to apologise in advance that I didn't picture everything we ate yesterday because you can imagine the issues of trying to snap everything that comes to a table of ten with a lazy Susan in full spin.

I think everyone has certain little pieces they must have when 'doing the yum cha' and mine are the following:

BBQ pork bun

prawn noodle

Oh and also quite embarassingly - jelly. But we will get to that later.

So how did the top two on my list fair to past experience?

Well my friend here the humble pork bun turned out to be very nice. Beautifully sized, fresh and easy to handle. The filling was a very lovely BBQ flavour - it had the hint of smokiness you always like and an array of spices dazzling your mouth. ALSO it wasn't too salty. I'd say this is one of the much better pork buns I've had at yum cha in a while. Another important thing was the fact I could tell what was inside when I took a bite, it wasn't non descript mush, it was little pieces of lovely things. and the bread was just divine sweet and fluffy, not clumpy and doughy.

Ahhh the noodle AKA Chee Cheong Fun. It has been a fascination for me ever since my days of eating yum cha at the Bamboo Terrace in Bulleen. When I was just a child. This Chee Cheong Fun was good, the prawn was good quality and that is important in a simple dish like this - because a slip in the quality is very noticable. You need harmony with a dish like this. Now I noticed something in amongst the prawn and noodle that seemed like egg but I wasn't sure. The sauce was very good. Overall it was decent - not the best I've had but then there was nothing particularly bad about it.

This squid was very very excellent. I haven't had something like this at yum cha before. Sure I've had squid at yum cha - BUT this spice that is on tip is great. I honestly had no idea what it was. But it almost reminded me off the heavy seasoning you get with sichuan cooking sometimes. It wasn't spicy, and it wasn't particularly crazy in the flavour in gave. But it lent a nice texture to the dish and also a very delicate flavour of many spices.

I really liked the arrangement of this dish. It was pretty and homely. It made me feel like I was going to a friends house for dinner or someone in my family had made a special meal. Here we have duck, chicken and jellyfish. This dish was accompanied by a sweet plum sauce for the duck and a ginger sauce for the chicken. This duck was excellent. The fattiness, crispness of the skin was perfect. It's always important to know that fattiness of these meats is so important in this cuisine I think. It always delivers a moist and fuller flavoured dish.

Now the jellyfish which I had never tried before turned out to be so beautiful. It was like having a noodle with a slightly harder texture - yet still soft. It just wan't mooshy you can see what I'm getting at. It was slightly spicy and simply a pleasure to eat. Don't let a food you have never tried before put you off. Because you may be very surprised as I was.

These were like fried buns with onions and there was an XO sauce served with them. They reminded me of the BBQ pork bun but the flavour didn't particularly stand out for me. They were simply a mundane bun.

This was nice. Prawn wrapped in tofu deep fried. Ooh yes. I liked it, because it wasn't too oily and it was very light. I wouldn't have too many of these but I think it's nice to try one or two with some chilli sauce.
Oh spring rolls. So conventional. So needed at yum cha. You know what they taste like, you know you have to get one. And everyone else wants one too. Believe me.

These were nice - what I liked is that you could tell what was inside, so there was none of this store bought shiftiness going on (i'd assume) and yeah lovely balanced flavour. Good with chilli sauce. But then I'm fond of chilli. You might be fond of sweet and sour or soy or who knows what else.

Prawn dumplings. Very good. I love these semi transparent little morsels. They were moist inside, didn't squirt and burn you. They had that slightly sticky outside which made them easy to pick up and they were soft to touch. Very well done.It also helped using good quality prawns.

From memory this is spinach and maybe scallop dumpling. I really loved it. It was such a pleasure to eat. I don't usually eat scallop but in this case the cooking, the other ingredients and what not made this so tasty for me.

There were other things such as the Taro and Pork dumplings - which were excellent. Gluten like in texture but very well flavoured.

Ginger steamed fish - TO DIE FOR. My brother's girlfriend, Amy who doesn't like fish all that much actually quite enjoyed this meal. So that's saying something.

The egg tart. They were OK. Could have done with more filling. The pastry was OK and the filling was OK. It's so hard to criticise something when it is just OK. So I hope you all know what I mean.

Mm watermelon and sago 'soup'. This was very refreshing and a good way to end the sitting. It cleansed my pallet and left me feeling content. The watermelon pieces were sweet, the soup was sweet but not overly so and the sago was well done. Good rumble.

Oh yeah, there was NO jelly. I was shocked and appalled in a very childish way. But I got over it. How could you not have the gloriously mundanely flavoured yet awesomely layered jelly at yum cha. Oh well better luck next time.

BUT overall Crystal Jade, you have impressed me! I hope everyone else enjoyed this too. And should you choose to go here, I hope it is as good for you as it was for me.