Located on the 2nd floor of the main building of the Sydney Fish Market, is a Chinese restaurant that is open 365 days a year, including holidays, and while it specializes in seafood (well why wouldn’t they?) also serves Dim Sum/Yum cha every day until 3pm.

Dim Sum is one of my guilty pleasures. If you’ve ever googled the nutritional information on it you know that EVEN if you just choose the steamed options and avoid the fried, the fat content on these things are truly horrifying — to the extent that the Hong Kong Government has been trying to dissuade its populace from their dim sum addition. So don’t fool yourself…

but that said, if you’re a dim sum fan looking for it while in Australia, you need to know that Australians, for some reason, prefer the term Yum Cha to Dim Sum, which is how it described in pretty much every other country I’ve been to. (This is true to the extent that some Aussies won’t know what you’re talking about if you say Dim Sum, and if you’re trying to find a place near you that serves it, you’ll need to try searching BOTH terms on yelp and elsewhere — as it’s listed as two separate things). To explain the confusion: according to Wikipedia, “Yum cha (飲茶) in Cantonese Chinese literally means “drink tea”… in Cantonese, dim sum (點心) refers to the range of small dishes, whereas yum cha refers to the entire meal.” So that considered… the British tradition of doing “high tea,” (something I’ve done fairly regularly during my travels) is probably borrowed (along with Tea) from the Chinese tradition of Yum Cha.

 

I’ve been in Australia about a month now… and the first week I was here I went to The Fish Markets, and when I wrote the blog post about it I mentioned having learned (while writing the post) that there was a Chinese restaurant on the building’s 2nd floor which I had missed (the day I was there I came down with a bad cold, which I most likely had picked up on the flight over, ah the joys of travel) … three weeks later I moved Airbnb’s, only to find myself a straight bus ride away from the Fish markets… and decided to rectify this.

The entrance is a single doorway leading to steep staircase at the far end of building. There is an elevator but it is NOT the one that’s easy to find at the front of the building where everyone enters. That one leads to the administrative/business floor an there’s no through walkway from there to the restaurant. You have to go outside, keep walking to the back-end of the building and in an entry way — that looks like you MUST be in the wrong place — is an elevator that is VERY VERY VERY slow, but will take you up to the restaurant.

Once up there they’ll seat you (try to get one with the view of the bridge… and if it’s before 3pm there are dim sum carts to choose you lunch from… or you can order off the menu.

That said, it was some of the best Dim Sum I have had in a while — especially for outside of China. Everything was very fresh, and since most of their clientele are Chinese… who are way more discriminating about Dim Sum than the rest of planet is, its sort of to be expected. The turnip cake, which is one of my favorite things but is usually made badly, was the best I’ve had in years.