Twitter Takeaway

Thursday 29 March 2007

Long Lunch with Yuki

It's always nice to go out for a proper lunch with good friends. I'm one of the people who just hates having sandwiches for lunch... Lunchtime should be spent indulging your belly and making the day special.

After a few SMS back and forth, Yuki and I finally found time to catch up last Thursday. She loves yumcha, so we decided to go to Oriental Tea House... It use to be called Ay Oriental Tea House (as I have mentioned before)

Oriental Tea House is a little more pricier than your typical Chinese Restaurant with you likely to spend about $20 each, even for lunch. As you can see from the photo, we had a lot.... Never order dimsum when you're hungry... the waiters don't stop you ordering too much either.
I kinda wish they have a tick-it-yourself order form, because the names of some of those dimsums are long and I am sure the waiters would appreciate it too... as they are the same people who serve people buying tea in the tea salon area. Come lunchtime, it can get pretty very busy.

I like Oriental as it's not as nosy as having Yumcha at some other Chinese Restaurants, and no trolleys to worry about. Did you know that at most Chinese Restaurants you can actually pre-order your dimsums before the trolleys come.. This is great if you are in a rush, but I understand that some like the novelty of looking at what's available on the trolley and trying something new.

Every time I've gone to Oriental, there is always people eating alone, nothing wrong with that and they look pretty comfortable as well.



The desserts at Oriental, is pretty standard, i.e. mango pudding, coconut cake etc. Well, Kokoblack is close by and I ran out of chocolate, so we opted to go to Kokoblack for some hot chocolate.


Their menu has extended to include dessert sets. The table next to us had the Belgian Spoil -
which was a chocolate platter with chocolate cake, two Belgian chocolates, a shortbread,
chocolate ice cream and chocolate mousse. Pretty good for $10.00! Yuki had the chilli hot chocolate and I had the creamy plain one. Before we left we had a look at their Easter chocolates. Oh boy, I wanted a dark chocolate bunny for my Aunty... the smallest one was $35 (TT). The little 3 pack dark chocolate bunny ganache was cheaper so I bought a few for my colleagues and they said that they were delicious.

After lunch, I rolled back to the office, content.

Oriental Tea House

322 Little Collins Street

Melbourne

03 9654 8399


Ratings
Food: Freshly steamed dimsum when you order

Top Dish: Marinated Spare Ribs

Atmosphere: Simple and airy
Service: Fast to give you the menu and sit you down but you have to wave them down. Give yourself plenty of time to get the bill as well.
Booking: Recommended but not essential

7 comments:

Truffle said...

What a lovely lunch! I've added a link to your blog :)

thanh7580 said...

Hi Kazmic, another Melbourne food blog to follow. Oriental Tea House has been one of the Yum Cha places I haven't been to and wanted to go.

Also another thing I've wanted to have the guts to do is to eat alone (at a proper restaurant not fast food place) and not feel strange about it.

Maybe I will try to accomplish the two things at once at Oriental Tea House.

thanh7580 said...

By the way, I tried to subscribe to your main feed but it doesn't seem to be working?

thanh7580 said...

Ok the feed at the bottom of the page works, but not the link in the side toolbar.

Kazmic said...

Hi Thanh7580,
It does take courage to eat alone for fine dining. Even though I sometimes travel alone for work, I still struggle with the thought of having dinner alone. Some how breakfast and lunch is fine, as I tend to be deep in thought or in a hurry. But dinner is usually consist of a long and relaxing meal, which seems a little strange having alone. However, I have seen a lot of people eat alone in greart restaurants...Italy 1, Kenzan etc... Maybe a good start is a restaurant in a hotel, where there is more of change of others dining alone? Rockpool, Number 8 perhaps? Let me know how you go!

Re: The RSS Feed, I hope I've fixed it - http://gastronomicalvoyage.blogspot.com

Kazmic said...

Thank you Truffle,
It's an honour, I love your blog :)

thanh7580 said...

The thought of eating alone is definitely daunting. I'm really quite jealous of those people who have the confidence to just sit there and enjoy their meal by themselve. I agree with you that lunch and breakfast are ok but dinner just feels different. I will try it soon and hopefully it will go well.