Dim sum

Jumbo Floating Restaurant in Hong Kong

San Francisco has a huge one.

So does Boston and New York.

Sydney, Buenos Aires, London. Even Paris has one in its 13th Arrondissement.

Chinatown!

Turns out Joburg has one too. The largest in South Africa as a matter of fact. And this Sunday we made a pilgrimage for one of our favorite Sunday rituals - Dim Sum. We met up with my fun Joburg meet-up group and headed over to Derrick Street in Cyrildene, Joburg's Chinatown.



Our destination restaurant Shun De serves Dim Sum as part of its traditional Yum Cha, morning or afternoon tea. Yum Cha in Cantonese literally means "drink tea." In the U.S. and UK, we use the phrase Dim Sum in place of Yum Cha. But only the names are different; it was the familiar ritual.

And it brought back memories of some of our favorite eats at the Chinese restaurants in NY. Peking Duck at Shun Lee Palace (the site of our wedding rehearsal dinner too!) Almond cookies at Nom Wah Tea Parlor. Soup dumplings at Joe's Shanghai. The crab at Sam Wo's.

Early in our dating and married life, Chinatown was one of our favorite eating destinations in the city. Vince and I would even go to cooking demonstrations in the basement at Hunan in Chinatown and then try the techniques at home. Could not wait to see what Joburg had to offer!

We met up with about 30 members of our Joburg meet-up group after pre-paying our R90 pp share for the communal dinner. That is like $9.00! For that we had our fill of Dim Sum and tea. (We had to add another $2 the day of for extras and tip, but still!)

Since we were sharing, we were divided into two groups of tables, the adventurous tables (chicken feet, jellyfish and tripe soup) and the normal tables (dumplings, buns and spring rolls).

Lara explaining the procedure ...

I was with the normal half.

chicken feet?

Vince was adventurous!












Afterwards we walked up and down Derrick Street, the main drag, to get the feeling of Chinatown, Joburg style:

tee hee

heard firecrackers exploding while we were eating

the scene of the crime

interesting soup making

street food

We have a local Chinese market right near our house in Morningside where we can get our frozen dumplings, noodles and all manner of Asian condiments. But except for our versions of a Chinese Dumpling Soup, Japanese Udon Soup and Vietnamese Pho Soup, we are less interested these days in cooking Asian food ourselves at home. So much easier to go to Shun De!