Thursday, January 29, 2015

Dim Sum + Hot Pot In One Day

Continuing with the reacquainting series, my friend from a previous post and I met up with another old high school friend who I usually catch up from time to time. He wanted Hot Pot, and so I suggested a place, only to find out they also offer more than one specialty...

Hot Pot, with Dim Sum? Who would have thought...

To make things less confusing, I will start stating people by their names. Mitchell is the boy I have recently been catching up with these past few weeks, and he suggested that we should go out for Hot Pot. So I suggested that we should go for Garden City Hot Pot, as it's one of my favourites (though, is there really a way to differentiate Hot Pot restaurants from another?) I brought our friend KC along, even though he wanted to change to restaurant...

When I picked up KC from the sky train, he was telling me that the restaurant also served Dim Sum in addition to Hot Pot. Unfamiliar with this knowledge, I was a little skeptical, since I have only been to this place during dinnertime. But blow and behold, they do both! Oh my, I couldn't contain my excitement, it's the best of both worlds all wrapped into one :"D

Garden City Hot Pot is owned by Top Gun Group, and their Dim Sum restaurant is situated right above the Hot Pot. Who would have thought of such magical combinations coming from a chain? The server first asked for our own individual tea orders, when I thought the pot was a default tea that they serve everyone. KC ordered the darkest tea (not sure what the name is), while Mitchell and I ordered chrysanthemum flower:

The darker the tea, the healthier it is

Individual settings: custom to suit everyone's taste

In Chinese, it is translated into 'golden flower'


More restaurants should offer this kind of service

At first, I was lost as to why they served us just the leaves/flowers instead of giving a pot. But Mitchell was telling me that we have to wash the tea first, and then pour it into the cup pictured above. There was a bowl to throw away the 'dirty' tea, but I had troubles with getting tea into the cup (several messes had to be cleaned up).

We first ordered dim sum, but could not understand the menu since none of us can really read characters. So we had to match it up to the English equivalent, got the essentials like siu mai and har gow, and also got some interesting dishes not usually served during dim sum:

Deep Fried Squid Balls with Shrimp (pretty tasty)

Deep Fried Squid Tentacles (delicious!)

At this point, was feeling a little bit full, but the best had yet to come. So next we got into the Hot Pot, and ordered a bunch of things - the waiter advised that there were too many ingredients ordered ._. After deliberating with my friends what to get rid of, we narrowed it down to about six pickings:

Mmm, Ginger & Chicken Broth

Udon, Fatty Beef Slices, Pork, everything you need in Hot Pot

Mushrooms & Green Vegetables (I don't recall the actual name)

While this is all happening, we were discussing about working out and gym memberships... Yup, that seemed fitting the same moment stuffing your face with everything at once. But we caught up with each other, who we have seen, advice with job hunting, and taking a stroll down memory lane. If you ever want to catch up with your friends, may I suggest Dim Sum & Hot Pot combo at the Garden City Hot Pot? I honestly don't know why restaurants do more of this, it's genius, and more than enough food for a day! And once it was all over, we had to take a photo (in good lighting, of course):

Food and Friends, what more could you ask for?

*Note: you might want to invite more people for this kind of lunch, because it's certainly not a cheap meal x_x

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