CHUNG YING CANTONESE RESTAURANT
On 28 July 2007, Dim and I went to Chung Ying Cantonese Restaurant, the last of the four Chinese restaurants that serve dim sum lunch in Birmingham China Town.
The reason why we have not visited this place until today was, 1) we guessed that they would serve the same food as Chung Ying Garden where we have already been, 2) none of our acquintance or friends recommended it.
So we were not so keen to go, but being motivated by the mission to conquer all the 4 places, we finally arrived there.
One feature shared by Chung Ying and Chung Ying Garden is the dimness: it is dim even during the lunch time.
At rare occasions when we have the sun in England, we want to eat in sun light. Why they need to use blinds and curtains to shut out the sun light on purpose? Uncomprehensible.
This photo was taken around 3 o'clock, and there are only few people, but when we arrived around 2, it was half full. I don't know if it was only by chance, but here the ratio of non-Chinese customers to Chinese was higher than in other three restaurants, and maybe for this reason, the waiters were more communicative than in other places.
This is scallop cheung fun, £3.50.
They were ok, but not exceptional. My impression was that the cheung fun was thicker than the one I ate in Chung Ying Garden. Another thing I noticed was the visual effect, or rather the lack of it. As scallops are white, the combination with white cheung fun is not visually attractive. The scallop cheung fun at Golden Pond was enhanced with coriander, and it looked better. Well, you might say that it does not matter as you don't see them anyway in the dark, but I would value higher the one of Golden Pond.
These are deep-fried prawn dumplings, £2.80.
Inside there were roughly chopped prawns. Dim liked them very much, but I am not a big fan of deep-frying.
Besides, three small dumplings on this large-ish plate were, again, not visually attractive.
These are scallop and prawn steamed dumplings, £2.80. They looked pretty but rather small.
The filling was minced prawn, and supposedly scallop, but I could not detect it. There were chopped water chesnuts giving crunchy texture to it. They tasted fine, if slightly too salty.
These are glutinous rice and meat steamed in lotus leaves, £3.30: Dim's favourite.
We ate something of the same name (in English) also at Chung Ying Garden, where the price was £3.80 (not that I remember, but I photographed the menu), and served on plate, not in steamer.
On closer look, these tasted less salty than the ones in CYG, and we found bits of meat on bones, which was rather unusual.
So I examined again the menu, and I noticed the Chinese character meaning "chicken" in its name. This kind of rice balls usually contains porky stuff, so these ones must have been a variety that contained chicken inside. Another indication that the dim sum served at CY and CYG is not the same.
This is fish porridge, £5. The porridge is not on the menu, but they can make it if you ask. When I asked, our waiter told us that they could make it with any accompaniments we liked, pork, beef etc.
I was not convinced by this porridge. There was sufficient quantity of sliced fish, but they did not taste anything. There were also chopped spring onions and Chinese fried bread, but the latter should not look like these and must be made in a wrong way. I prefer fish porridge served with ginger. Again, I prefer the fish porridge of Golden Pond.
The Chinese tea was brought to the table for free, and the bill came to £17.30. Price-wise it was ok, but I don't think we would return as the food did not excited us and it was too dark inside. The toilets were also dismal.
Compasion with Chung Ying Garden. Looking at the dim sum menus, they were slightly different, although similar. While CYG offers 100 items of dim sum (well, only on Chinese menu; on English menu they were around 50), CY has only 52. I should guess that the dim sum chefs of two places were different. I would rather go to CYG than to CY.
Address: 16-18 Wrottesley Street, China Town, Birmingham
Telephone 0121 622 5669
Web page http://www.chungying.co.uk/
