The XY Dim Sim Dumpling House which used to be in Deakin has relocated to the Italo Club in Forrest. All you can eat yum cha is $20.80 per person on the weekend. I organised weekend yum cha here with a group of friends (six of us in total). You have to be a member of the club to go upstairs to yumcha but it’s not too expensive for an annual membership (I think about $6?)
It’s a slightly smaller space than the restaurant in Deakin. I’d recommend booking ahead as the place was packed by 12.30pm. We started off with a round of various steamed dumplings – prawn and chive, and vegetable dumplings.
The chive dumplings were flavourful as were the har gow (prawn dumplings) but were slightly over steamed. (I kind of like the Costco ones better).
The crispy fried squid was a disappointment and tasted better with the fried skin off the squid.
The siu mai were huge but not as flavoursome. Not the best I’ve had.
We accepted the fried rice as we were all starving and needed to fill our bellies. We were noticing that the wait staff weren’t coming in our direction and it was getting difficult grabbing someone’s attention.
Some sticky rice came our way (just one). This was tasty but small with hardly any filling.
A second serve of spring rolls came around and we happily gobbled this up. At this stage, we were going to take whatever we could get.
On multiple occasions we’d asked for more dumplings. One batch eventually came our way, but they only brought out one bamboo steamer filled with four dumplings. And there were six of us. No more dumplings came our way after that and it felt like wait staff were ignoring us. When the desserts came out, we were lucky to have a choice of mango pudding and coconut jelly. The majority chose the mango pudding which was sugary sweet.
A couple of people had the coconut jelly.
Overall, I don’t think I’d go back here in a large group. Even though I’d made a booking for our group of six beforehand, the servings weren’t enough to satisfy all of us. We would often receive one steamer containing either three or four pieces, to share amongst the six of us. And when we asked for another steamer since there were six of us, let’s just say this wasn’t met with happiness. We then noticed our group was avoided completely when freshly made food came out. Yum cha is all about prime position, you don’t want to be stuck in a corner (which we were) but often you can’t help where you sit. It may be easier in a group of two or three as you won’t need to fight over who gets what. The food itself is nothing special. I’d prefer going to The Scholar and paying more for better quality food.
I won’t be rushing back to this place any time soon.
Foodgasm 5/10
