Wednesday 27 May 2015

The hype, the buzz, Tim Ho Wan

WOW! Michelin star! Famed dim sum restaurant! And we are allowed any item on the menu, sweet or savoury! The pressure is on for THW - that reputation, and recommendation from so many people who ate at THW in Hong Kong - is it worthy of a star? Does it live up to the hype (and the mad queue of people willing to wait over an hour for a table)?

There wasn't a huge selection on the menu - about 20 or so dishes - so it was an easy "let's get 2 or 3 of everything and see how we go". Gotta admire their kitchen - the food all pretty much arrived at once, which meant a frenzy of photos, rearrangements, consolidating plates to make room, and of course, lots of eating.

Good quality dim sums, fairly standard dim sum offerings such as siew-mai, steamed prawn dumplings and rice noodle rolls. The BBQ pork bun was unusual in that the bun was covered in a light and sweet crust as opposed to the fluffy white bun. Many of us were quite taken by the steamed spinach dumplings, the thin and transparent pastry and the flavourful filling. There were also little parcels of sticky rice with chicken, or little tins of rice with Cantonese lap-chong sausages.

Finally we get to the sweet items - the fluffy steamed sponge cake - wobbly goodness. The light sago pudding with pomelo - very light, very summery, though a little flat. And the beautifully fragrant osmanthus jelly - gorgeous.
Overall it was fine, the food was enjoyable and reasonably good quality. I'm not sure it's fair for me to judge as I was never a huge fan of yum cha. And these dishes didn't blow my mind and change how I felt. The standout dishes though was the rice vermicelli roll with sesame sauce, and the deliciously fragrant osmanthus jelly. 2 out of a possible 20......

Will I come back again? Maybe ... when the queues die down to nothing. Then again, the food court just outside looks highly appealing...

CS

[KT: Big shoes to fill but the Sydney team has done well since opening. My experience in the Mongkok THW remains the most memorable... mmm...]

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