(If you are a vegan and reading about meat meals make you sick, please click on another link. I understand that not every vegan can stomach reading such content!)

I seldom blog about restaurant food so today is a very RARE day for me. It’s a relatives-only get-together, so none of our friends were invited. I agree with Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com that one or a few rare “meat” occasions or parties a year will not kill you.

We collectively decided to pig out at YUM CHA. In Cantonese, YUM CHA means “drink tea”.

They only take bookings if you are more than 8 (people). I find this policy a little snobbish cos what if I came with 2 or 3 friends and there are no more tables for us??

Anyway, YUM CHA was not hard to find – it’s opposite the Galaxo Tattoo Studio, at Trengannu Street (near Temple Street, Chinatown area). If you’re driving you’d need to enter second lane on your left (after Chinatown Point) ie. Temple Street.

As YumCha is in a shophouse (on 2nd floor), one cannot expect a lift. There was no electronic wheelchair to help handicaps get to the second floor, but for people with arthritic knee joints, the short fleet of stairs is a tiny consolation. Probably due to its constrained area, there’s also no area for kids or pets. It may be difficult for some to find parking area within 200 metres, but this too may be out of Yumcha’s control.

I imagine the stairs to be very slippery when people step in and out of rain (I can’t remember if the stairs were wooden or carpeted!) But there should be a place where customers could leave their wet umbrellas aside without fear of losing them later.

Yumcha’s yellow and orange interior is air-conditioned and cozy (almost no eateries in Singapore are without aircon anyway).

Yumcha serves chrysanthemum tea and green tea. We chose the latter (chrysanthemum tea is good too).

Green tea not only helps to “wash away” excess omega-6 oils, but is also anti-cancer. Green tea helps guard against many cancers such as prostate cancer, lung cancer and liver cancer; it strengthens our immune system too.

We had a whole pot of green tea to serve ourselves and it wasn’t too bitter. (No one asked if we needed to top-up our tea, but we were happy and ready to leave by the time the teapot was close to just tea-leaves.)

HEALTH TIP: Avoid consuming very hot drinks or very hot food; this has been associated with cancer of the oesophagus.

We decided not to order several things (to leave more stomach space for more goodies):
* BAOs (buns) because you can easily get those from HDB kopi tiams and besides they make you full before you even have the chance to savour other dishes
* congee (porridge) – I can easily cook that myself at home
* sharks’ fin soup (in support of SAVING them, and not killing them)
* any ala-carte fish dish (they are extra cost anyway)

I know it’s a dimsum eatery but as I made myself comfortable, I was already thinking about ice-cream, sherberts, chocolates , cheesecake, brownies, cupcakes, etc!

From trolleys pushed around by service staff, I could easily pick foods right there and then. Almost all the dim dum are steamed and served piping hot in their bamboo-steamer. Was provided a ticking menu to choose dimsum which I found more useful for ordering cold desserts and some non-meat dishes (watercress and “crispy banana balls”).

I love the fragrant sliced ginger that came with paper-wrapped chicken. Also the plate of green Bak Choi (cooked with oyster sauce and topped with crispy fried onion slices) and the watercress dish were delicious. Vegetables are the human body’s road-sweepers that sweep away any possible sticky plague that would otherwise clog up heart ateries (leading to heart failures). [ And if you think plague is bad, cholesterol-lowering heart drugs are riskier (google for Dr. Caldwell's excellent videos on REAL cause of heart attacks and deaths from first heart attacks). ]

My brother and I had a good time mimicking ‘ancient’ patrons of the area, who used to come out of opium dens in this Chinatown area, looking like idiots. We were perhaps one of the loudest family table!

Laughing helps to burn fat in the tummy area but I don’t know how I got through talking with my mouth full! lol

My only “real complaint” with dimsum (besides meat which I view as vaccinated unhappy animals with no life of their own before they were slaughtered and mixed with flour with no real nutrition) are the trans-fat (unhealthy for the heart). And if they used white flour, there’s alloxan (cancer-causing) in there. With traditional Chinese Dim Dum, you can hardly avoid unless organically cold-pressed coconut oil is used instead.

HEALTH TIPS: Do you know that any vegetable oil that is deep-fried is trans-fat? Do you know that margarine is also trans-fat? Oxidised animal fat, starch, calcium and iron makes a dangerous combination of sticky plague (unhealthy for the heart). “Reduce high animal-fat, avoid cancer.” However, fat from red meat and white meat are not much different. White meat like fish and prawns may have higher mercury content (contaminated water). If you cook at home, you can try making your own deliously-steamed mock meat dim sum by using filtered water, buckwheat flour and carrots/yam (ground into powder).

There were 3 dips: chilli, mayonnaise and vinegar. My brother thought the steamed food went better with chilli or vinegar, while the deep-fried tasted better with mayonnaise. I agreed with him.

No complaints about the taste of the food! Yumcha’s scallops and prawn dumplings (Har Gao) were heaven!

HEALTH TIP: Do you know? Sesame seeds are one of the most under-rated healthy food! And so are the coarsely-chopped parsley and spring onions in Dim Dum too!

For desserts, we had Grass Jelly and Mango (cold), Mango Pudding (cold) and Egg Custard Tarts (mildly warm). The tarts were bite-sized and comparably tasty to those offered by Jackie Chan’s. For some reason, I prefer the egg tarts to the custard crepes (thin “pancake” rolled up like a Popiah).

Food colourings I was concerned with:
green colouring for the scallop dumplings and
the yellow colouring for the mango pudding (cold in a bowl).

I sure hope the mango pudding mixture were cooled down before they scopped them into plastic bowls! BPA in plastics are harmful and especially to babies and young children

Last orders were taken at 5.30pm

And there was no ice-cream, sherberts, chocolates nor cheesecake. But why was I expecting those foods from a dimsum restaurant? lol

Health TIP: There’s also a lot of sugar in the desserts that are not good for those who are already diabetic (or trying not to get diabetes). Even a cup of coffee and spike glucose levels of those with diabetes.

On my way out I noticed a traditional Chinese lantern outside a window. I looked out and saw the rest of Yumcha’s exterior achitecture and clouds. Only the unsightly birds’ droppings marred the lovely view. This photo was edited to make them droppings-free.

The ladies’ washroom was clean (no stench) and HAD toilet paper. I must have been there at the right time, it was not crowded.

Nutrition of food: 2 upon 5 (understandable as dimdum is actually “fast food”)
Taste of food: 4.5 upon 5
Ambience: 3.8 upon 5 (Nice theme and lanterns!)
Practicality: 2.5 upon 5
Customer service: 3.5 upon 5 (Staff should be less mechanical, should smile more and be more attentive)
Price: 3.8 upon 5 (SG$22 per person before GST and only on weekdays)
Overall experience: 67%

Related Info for Cancer Sufferers and the Health-Conscious
Avoid the use of talcum powder around the lower abdomen or near their private parts; it has been associated with ovarian cancer.
70% of chicken in the USA are fed arsenic! Kathy Freston: Cancer and diet
Studies showed chimps are USELESS in Cancer Research. RELEASE THEM back to the wild!