It has taken a while for us to make it to Royal China. The main reason is Rachael’s absolute insistence that dim sum may only be eaten at lunchtime. This is, of course, a) absolutely correct and b) an absurd extra hurdle to add into a food challenge. Until I realised they don’t actually serve these little portions of deliciousness after 4pm!
“[They] have an excellent crunch-squish mouthfeel”
One of the delights of dim sum is that you get to have a variety of dishes, and choose a meal with things that complement and play off each other, so the presence of a particular item on Time Out’s top 100 list might seem a little odd. For one thing, whether you have a nice small dish meal is so often a matter of the selection rather than one stand-out plate. So the question is do the yam paste dumplings particularly impress.
The answer is probably no. Sure, they’re nice, with a vermicelli-like shell of crispy strands of fried yam coating the standard-flavour pork dumpling meat filling. They’re volcano hot to bite into, and (beyond the fear of burning) have an excellent crunch-squish mouthfeel, that does offer a fun texture to ponder alongside slick cheung fun and soft, doughy char siu buns. But there’s no blow-your-mind flavour from two relatively low-key ingredients, or other sensation that would make me rush back.
I doubt I’d miss these if I failed to order them on a return visit. Does anyone disagree?
