Lin Heung Teahouse, Hong Kong

160-164 Wellington Street, Central
T. 2544 4556

Ah.. one of my favourite places for dim sum in Hong Kong. So the food is far from delicate, is chock a block of the fat that makes it tastes so good, the service a tad rough with waiters who would throw plates at you, the table always wet as they don’t take too much care with the hot water when refilling your teapot, and on occasion you have to go running after the dim sum lady to get what you want. But so what???

The ambience is to die for – old style tea house where the diners, look like they have been sitting there for hours, nibbling on the dim sum while pouring through the day’s papers. Service staff wailing out their wares to you as a fresh batch of dim sum emerges from the kitchen. I just love it.

And the food – it may be far from being finely crafted but I dream about the lotus paste paos here, stuffed with the creamy paste and a chunk of salted egg yolk, and the hor yip fan (fried rice wrapped in lotus leaves, then steamed) so frangrant from the salted egg they use to fry the rice. Not for the faint hearted. A simple command of Cantonese will be very useful. Prices are way easy on the pocket. Average cost per person, in inspite of the overordering, was US$6.