Chung Ying Garden
As far as I know there are four Chinese restaurants that offer dim sum lunch in Chinatown. 1) Chung Ying, 2) Chung Ying Garden, 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 June 2007 (Sat.) Dim and I went to a Chinese restaurant called Chung Ying Garden in Birmingham 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 (Don't worry: there is English menu, too). 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.
There were char siu pork, sliced Chinese sausage, etc. The fat from the meat got mixed in the rice to produce beautiful fatty mass.
Spring rolls. I ordered these for Dim who is more conservative in food than me. Nice, but nothing fantastic.
Steamed pork dumpling "Shao Long Bao". 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. Food was fine, but generally too salty for me.
Address: 17 Thorpe Street, Birmingham
Phone: 0121 666 6622
Website: http://www.chungying.co.uk/
For the visit on 14 October 2007, click here, for the visito on 26 Jan., 2008, here.
