Dim Sum @ China Court

On 6 June 2007 (Sat.) we went to the China Court restaurant in China town of Birmingham for Dim sum.


This place is the best reputed among my Japanese friends, so I had high expectations. When we visited, the most of the patrons were Chinese or Chinese looking people. The family sat next to us was paying even with foreign banknotes (I don't know if they were Chinese or Taiwanese, but definitely its like). In Birmingham, I have never seen so many Chinese people in a place at the same time.

The menu was as long as the other places' Dim Sum menues. There is a printed sheet to fill in on each tables, and you just have to tick the ones you want. The sheet printed only in Chinese, but the items are numbered exactly as in English menu. So no worries.

The interior is spacious and much brighter than Chung Ying Garden. As I was depressed by the dimmness of the CYG, I much appreciated the sunlight of China Court.

As we did at Chung Ying Garden, we chose 5 dishes: these are the photo of what we ate.

Usual Cheung Fun with King Prawns.



As you might be able to tell from the image, this Cheung Fun is not as soft and delicated as it should be. Even prawns were a bit stinky. This is inferior to the same thing in Chung Ying Garden. As Cheung Fun is my favourite, I was quite disappointed.

Rice pot with Chicken and Chinese Mushrooms.



Rice is nice, but again, difficult to eat because of small bones in the chicken. I will not order rice pots any more (but don't take me wrong: there was nothing wrong with China Court's rice pot, just personal preference). £4 is over-priced for this small pot of rice.


Vietnamese Spring Rolls.



This is deep-fried dish for Dim. Came with sweet chili sauce. I don't remember what there were inside, but the skin was too hard and bit too oily for me. Even Dim did not like them so much.


King prawn and scallop dumplings.



King prawn and scallop bits wrapped in transparent skin. This is potentially good dish, but, again, the prawns were stinky. On the other hand, scallop was sweet and tasty.

Stuffed bean curd rolls.



There were 3 pieces of them, but I ate one before taking this photo. This is interesting one. Various stuffings rolled in bean curd skin, and stewed in soy sauce. They might have been fried once before being stewed.

Summing up, it was not bad, but not too good neither. Probably I need to choose dishes to order more carefully.

Dim Sum @ Chung Ying Garden

As far as I know there are four Chinese restaurants that offer dim sum lunch in Chinatown. 1) Chung Ying（中英）, 2) Chung Ying Garden （中英花園飯店）, 3) China Court, and 4) Golden Pond. Each of them has its followers and when I asked around my friends and acquintances, I could not get the consensus. So I decided to try out all of them. This is the first one.

2/6/07 (Sat.) Dim and I went to a Chinese restaurant called Chung Ying Garden in Birmincham city centre.



This is the eating area inside. It was dim, although it was lunch time.



We had 5 dishes, no. 9, 19, 42, 70 and 99 from the Chinese menu. Obviously I don't remember exactly what we ate...

This is king prawn cheung fun (£3.00). Cheung fun is my favourite dim sum and I try it whenever I find it, so I have eaten in many places in several countries. These contained big chunks of king prawn (satisfying quality) , and cheung fun itself is soft and delicate. Very good.



This is mixed meat and glutinous rice wrapped in lotus leaves. Lotus leaves have particular perfume and it gets infused into the rice when they are steamed together. Very good, again.



This is how it looks like when opened.



Spring rolls. I ordered these for Dim who is more conservative in food than me. Indifferent to me.


Steamed pork dumpling "Shao Ron Pao". Nice but not perfect. The juice was not separted from the meat filling. I would liked some vinegar to go with. Dim did not like it as it was quite gingerly (he hates ginger).




This is rice with chicken and broccoli. Nice, but chicken had small bones and difficult to eat.




Total bill was about 18 pounds. A pot of tea is provided for free.

Next in the list is China Court Restaurant.