Shang Palace Weekend DimSum Yum Cha Buffet

Last month we celebrated my mom’s birthday at the new Shang Palace Yum Cha, available during weekends only. This promo is all you can dimsum with live carrot cake and congee stations. The regular Dimsum Plus promo is still ongoing but is available during weekday lunch service only. There are over 20 different kinds of steamed and fried dimsum choices available, smaller in scale than the Dimsum Plus but injected with a bit of fun.

The fun part about the Yum Cha lunch promo is that the steamed dimsum are pushed around the restaurant in these chic customized carts. Each cart carries a particular assortment of hot, steaming baskets.

Executive Chef Richard Thong mans the live turnip cake station.

Chef Richard pan fries the turnip cakes in eggs, something that I’ve never seen before.

The other station is a build your own congee station. HK style congee that comes with an assortment of toppings you can add to the days congee selection (chicken, pork or fish).

The fried dimsum choices are placed in a buffet area and you can just get what and how much you want of each one. When we ate there in early, there were no signs as to what each plate was, so it was a bit hard to guess so I made the only choice I could, get a piece from each one. I wished they did this on a per order basis instead of placing all of them out, some were not so hot already.

The biggest surprise was this frilly covered ball that was a cheese filled Fried shrimp ball.

This was also where you can get these globes of wonder, the Ham Suy Kok. Shang Palace is still the best place to enjoy these fried dimsum that have a chewy container filled with minced meat. Irene and I each had 4 of these babies.

Their Deep Fried Taro Puffs don’t contain your run of the mill ingredients, instead each one has a piece of scallop. How’s that for a crunchy surprise.

Lauren loved the Soy Sauce Fried Noodles or Chow Mien, she finished off two plates.

She paired the noodles with her other dimsum fave, the “Ma Lay Kao/Steamed Egg Cake“, this time showing up in cupcake form. Springy and light and not too sweet that even my dad liked so he got another basket.

Our favorite steamed dimsum at Shang Palace are the duo of Steamed Pork Dumpling with Crab Roe aka Siu Mai and the Steamed Crystal Prawn Dmpling aka Ha Kao. In my opinion, these are the best siu mai you can have in Manila and the ha kao are plump and juicy as well although the skin was a little too thick this time. We had lots of baskets of these two favorites of ours.

Got a little curios when I opened the cover of one of the baskets and found these green Spinach Dumpling stuffed with shrimp. They are similar to ha kao except it’s a different shape. Irene got an order of chicken feet, big, plump, meaty and tender.

My brother got these got these Chiu Chow Dumplings thinking it was like his favorite. He bit into it and found out it was vegetarian (hahaha). It was still good with lots of textures and crunch from the vegetables. We also had a few others like the Steamed spareribs and Lotus rice but I missed taking a photo of them.

For dessert we had 4 orders Baked Mini Egg Tarts that you can order thru the waitstaff. We wanted to have some Custard bun with Salted Egg but they ran out.