Enjoy Yum Cha

A trip to Hong Kong can never be complete without eating dim sum. Dimsum  siu bao, while yum cha describes the brunch tradition of eating dim sum with Chinese tea.

Traditional yum cha is a communal meal featuring bamboo steamers filled with a collection of steamed, pan-fried, and deep-fried dim sum dishes. They’d be piled high on push carts that would make their way from table to table.

Once the push cart reached your table, you could grab whatever you wanted and the server would jot down your order on a piece of paper. It’s an eating tradition beloved not just in Hong Kong, but in other Cantonese-speaking regions and communities around the world.

With the popularity of social media and Instagram, yum cha is becoming increasingly modernized in Hong Kong but there are old-school teahouses that still serve it in its most traditional forms. I suggest trying both.