Location: Garden City Hotpot 
8788 McKim Way
Richmond, BC V6X
604-303-0909
When talking to people from my grandparents’ generation about dim sum, very often they would tell me, with a note of disappointment, that dim sum is no longer enjoyed the way it used to be. If you are like me who was a kid in the 80’s, then I believe you will remember in restaurants, dim sum used to be neatly stacked in a trolleys, which were pushed between tables. The anticipation for the next trolley was always exciting. You never knew when your favourite dim sum item will come. While devouring on the BBQ pork bun, you constantly kept an eye on the trolleys, fearing that you will miss your favourite items. For dim sum newbies, checking out the dim sum from the trolleys was the only way to avoid mistakenly ordering adventurous items such as chicken feet or duck tongue.
All this has changed. Dim Sum, like other things in life, has evolved. What surprised me was dim sum has changed not only in my generation, but it has changed even before that. The older generation tells me about the bird cages, the individual tea selection and servers carrying dim sum steamers on their shoulders. I was particularly fascinated by how tea used to be served at dim sum. Nowadays tea is served in a teapot which everyone at a table shares, which means everyone drinks the same kind of tea. In the past, tea was never served in a tea pot. It was served in a “cha zhung”, a cup with a lid and no handle. Each person picked a tea and let it steeped in the “cha zhung”.
Garden City Hotpot is one of the very few places that still serves tea in the traditional way. The tea is first put into the “cha zhung” with hot water, but the water is poured out of the “cha zhung” immediately. The first round of water is dispensed because it is used to wash the tea. Hot water is then poured into the “cha zhung” again. The tea is steeped for a few minutes and then enjoyed using the drinking cup.
In Chinese, dim sum is called “Yum Cha”, which means “tea-drinking”. This term signifies the important role which tea plays in dim sum since the term refers to the tea component. Garden City Hotpot offers a good selection of fine tea: there is the elegant and clean tasting green tea “loong jang” (龍井), ET’s favourite, and my favourite fragrant red tea “lychee hong” (荔枝紅). Other selection includes jasmine, “bo yi” (普洱), “teet guun yum” (鐵觀音) and many others.
Garden City Hotpot makes an attempt to recreate the experience of enjoying dim sum in the old days. Although dim sum is still ordered with a piece of paper (I doubt many restaurants nowadays can afford the expensive labour of pushing trolleys), Garden City Hotpot offers quite a few dim sum dishes that are considered as lost dishes from the old times. The “pork liver siu mai” is an example of these dishes:
“Pork liver siu mai” did not look anything like the yellow skinned “siu mai” that we eat nowadays. Meatballs made from pork were steamed with pork liver. If you like pork liver like I do, then you will like this dish.
The spareribs were very delicious; they were steamed with Japanese pumpkin, which soaked up all the meat flavour.
We ordered other usual dishes such as shrimp spring rolls (which were perfectly deep fried), stuffed eggplant with fish paste and chicken rice served in a pot. Every dish was yummy. The menu has many more dim sum dishes from the old days and we are committed to try those in our next visit.
I’m fascinated by the way in which dim sum was enjoyed in the past. I was told that I can find the experience in a few well known restaurants in Hong Kong, and one of these restaurants is “Luk Yu Tea House”. Opened since 1933, “Luk Yu” is one of the most classic teahouses in HongKong. I’m committed to paying it a visit in my next trip to Asia. Before then, Garden City Hotpot is my dim sum place for now.
