Eating out

Now, I love my food and all things food-related, it's something that was instilled into me by my parents and their love of food too. My parents often used food as a sign of their affection, and they taught me to always value and cherish food, how food is a precious commodity that should never be taken for granted.

With that in mind, one of my favourite treats as a child was being able to all go out to a chinese restaurant (generally on Sundays, just before we kid went to Sunday Chinese school) for yum cha. Yum cha is basically when families of chinese people go out to restaurants predominantly to have dim sum (you all know what that is, right?). When I was out with some friends in a chinese restaurant for dinner recently, they mistakenly said that dim sum were starters. I guess they're partially correct in that the portions are small and thus could be the equivalent of a starter size portion of food. What generally happens is that you get a fair selection of dim sum for everyone to share and eat. Anyway, I digress.. So yes, I used to love being able to go out and yum cha with my family. There are still favourites that I like to order because they're dishes that I grew up eating. My mother still recalls how in the early 80s, the only way you got to eat roast duck was from a chinese restaurant. If they wanted one to cook at home, they would have to go to the local abbatoir or farm. With that in mind, I still think that the roast duck you get in Chinese restaurants are the best way to cook them. The smell of roast ducks coming from Chinatown whenever I head over there sends me into a salivating mess every time. I remember how not too long ago, you had to queue for about an hour before getting a table on Sunday afternoons because there were only a handful of places you could eat and yum cha.

However, with the boom in places to eat in Chinatown over the past few years, the queues only exist for the more centrally located restaurants and on big occasions - Mother's Day, Chinese New Year, etc. IN fact, the only place that regularly gets long queues is Big Wok, the buffet place where it is incredibly cheap to have lunch for around a fiver - especially when it comes to a "eat as much as you like" buffet, but the quality is much lower than the surrounding restaurants. You can't get much dim sum there (if at all), and well, no chinese families go there anymore.

Mum still likes to go out to Chung Ying (one of the first chinese restaurants to open in Chinatown 25 years ago). She's such a regular there that all the waiters know her and so she gets bigger portions and freebies, etc. As soon as she hears that I'm not working on a Sunday, she always offers to take me to yum cha there. Usually, I'd jump at the opportunity, but I think that I'm getting a bit fed up of it. On the one hand I'm trying to limit my visits there so that I can enjoy them more when I do go, but on the other hand, I'm thinking that I should go and enjoy myself whilst I can. OK, there's also the point that Sundays are the one day I get to myself and so I like to be at home cooking, but again, the lure of roast duck is very appealing.. I dunno, guess I'll have to see how I feel when I wake up tomorrow.