Dim Dim Sum

Sunday brunch is one of my favourite meals of the week. It is lazy, it is decadent and, in our household, it's best taken in our favourite dim sum haunt, The Paramount. This weekend however, we decided that it might be a good idea to do something different. So we went for dim sum somewhere else.

Like The Paramount, Tea House is owned by the Tung Lok Group and I remember that on my last visit (oh, about four years ago when it first opened), the food was decent. I remember liking something called the Heavenly Bun - a steamed pau stuffed with lotus seed paste and peanut butter.

Anyway, Tea House has since relocated to the third floor of China Square Food Centre. Once we entered, its staff practically formed a line to offer us steamed and fried goodies from their trolleys. The speed with which we were served was just about the only good thing about our meal yesterday morning. Because the food, well, sucked.

The ingredients were less than fresh, the dim sum skins were hardly refined and there was nary a har gao in sight. How can a dim sum restaurant not have har gao on its menu/trolley/whatever? I also ordered a portion of siao long baos which were really pork meatballs wrapped in a crude skin. There was no broth in the siao long bao. 'Nuff said, I think.

In the end, we skipped dessert (we never skip dessert) and vowed to stick with tradition. No prizes for guessing where we'll be headed next Sunday afternoon.