My dim sum lunch-filled weekend!

Piggy-shaped barbecue pork buns and goldfish-like har gow

can be found when having dim sum at Yum Cha ;D

Lung King Heen's baked barbecue pork buns are less cute

but will bring a smile to the faces of those who taste them!

Ditto re these rice rolls whose delicious content combo 

may well be found only at Lung King Heen...

I love eating dim sum in Hong Kong -- heck, I even enjoyed going out for dim sum on my forays into London when I lived in England, and when I lived in Philadelphia too! -- but don't have it as often as I would like.  One reason is that there is so much delicious fare on offer in the Big Lychee.  Another big reason is that dim sum is one of those kinds of meals that's better in the company of others -- and the more people the better -- than on one's own and not all my friends are as big fans of dim sum as me (yes, shocking I know!).

This weekend though, I had the rare experience of having dim sum both for Saturday and Sunday lunch!  The Saturday lunch had been planned for as far back as a couple of months ago -- because that's how far in advance one usually has to book a table for weekend lunch at three Michelin-starred Lung King Heen.  And even after having pigged out once again at the only three Michelin-starred restaurant that I've happily returned to more than once now, I happily chose the dim sum option after a friend visiting from Japan who used to live in Hong Kong told me he'd be happy to go for either dim sum or Korean barbecue!  

My usual practice when eating dim sum with friends is to have it so that each of us in attendance gets to order two dishes of their choice.  With four people at the table at Lung King Heen yesterday, we ordered eight dishes (taking care to make sure that its stellar baked barbecue pork buns was among them -- though yesterday, the star of the show actually may have been the steamed lobster rice rolls!) and then ended up getting unexpectedly given a complimentary round of super delicious mango pudding along with the restaurant's customary petit fours. 

At lunch at Yum Cha -- another restaurant offering dim sum that I've happily returned to more than once now -- today, my table also followed the "two dishes per person" rule.  But since there were just two of us at the table, we had just four dishes.  Also, because, as I told the friend I was dining with, I would have a lot more chances to eat dim sum than him in the next few days, weeks and months, I let him pick the majority of the dishes we had.  

I must admit that I was curious to see what kind of dim sum dishes a Japanese person like him would like.  As it turned out, his selections were pretty conventional in that they included one type of rice roll and also an order of steamed barbecue pork buns.  The thing though is that at Yum Cha, the latter are shaped like little pigs -- and together with my choice of har gow which were colored to resemble goldfish, made what was put on our table more unusual looking than usual! ;D