Kam Fook

Review:

This is one of the hardest reviews I’ve ever made and also one of the toughest to predict in terms of the price.  I present you Kam Fook. I will review their Yum Cha, which literally means drinking tea (with the accompaniment of Dim Sum dishes). Just like any good yum cha places, be prepared to wait for quite a while if you are not early enough.

In a Yum Cha session, there is a little piece of paper on the table for the waitresses to stamp your orders. Waitresses will come with their trolley to your table offering you little dim sum plates. There are a lot you can choose from and unfortunately they only provided brief description in English. So you would need to be really familiar with the dishes you really wanted or it might be a challenge for you. I will try to cover as many dishes as possible in this review, but most importantly, none of these were bad.

Starting from the basic availability in Yumcha, we ordered Steamed Prawn Dim Sum and Siomay (Shu Mai). These dishes are always available in any restaurants and if you tasted a hint of disappointment, I suggest you pack up straight away. These are the dishes that shouldn’t go wrong.

These next two might rather be unusual for Westerners, Sticky Rice in Lotus Leaf and Chicken Feet. It was one pretty messy dish in sticky rice. This one was kinda like Bakcang (or Rouzong) or sweet sticky rice with stewed meat and egg yolk. I’ll skip the chicken feet explanation and only say ‘Yummy’.

From the deep fried department, we ordered Whitebait and Prawn Dumpling. I always need some crunchy stuff when eating, thus this completed our experience.

For the staple food, we normally ordered Fried Rice Noodles with Peanut (and possibly Hoi Sin) sauce and Green Vegetables. Rice noodles were my personal favourite, lightly fried and went really well with the sauce.

There are also special dishes trolleys. On this occasion we ordered Pipis in XO Sauce. You might especially want to skip these dishes (including Peking Duck, Oysters, etc) if you don’t want your bill to skyrocket. I suggest you ordered one or two as a highlight for the day.

One thing that we never miss is the dessert. It has always been Mango Pudding and Pancake. They could’ve done better than just to put the pudding on a plastic cup, but nevertheless that’s the common ‘practice’ in a Yum Cha place.

Granted that the price might be a little bit more expensive for some of you, but Kam Fook presented the best thing a Yum Cha place is seriously lacking, Great Service – i.e. u don’t get kicked out as soon as you chew your last bite. I would also contest the term ‘pricey’ since I believe most Yum Cha places charge that amount with significantly less quality and crappy service.

Did you know?

Little did we know that Kam Fook obtained one hat chef for the SMH’s Good Food Guide in 2004.  I guess that explained why they charged above average meal.

Location:

Shop 6010, Level 6, Westfield Shopping Centre, Bondi Junction, NSW 2022