I headed out nice and early on a Saturday morning to get a coffee. while I was sitting enjoying my coffee I received a SMS from one of my friends bec who lives in karratha. Bec said in the SMS that she was actually in Perth and would like to catch up with me for lunch, preferably in northbridge as her hubby had a craving for dim sum. Now one thing that people should know about me is that I love asian food so any time that anyone wants to join me for some asian food then I am more than happy to join them. They left the selection to me and I chose a place called Joy Garden because the food is quite tasty but mainly because bec had her son with her and Joy Garden has slightly more room than the other dim sum places.
It’s funny with dim sum places how after trying them out you get to see slight differences between place to place. For example one place might have really good steamed pork buns and another place might have really good squid tentacles. While we were sitting down I noticed a selflessness (for lack of a better word) that is pretty absent when I go to dim sum with Pauly. I think because I haven’t been to dim sum with scott and bec before and I don’t know what their likes and dislikes are so I am hesitant to suggest dishes. However when I am with Pauly I know that we will be ordered beef tendon, tripe, chickens feet. Pretty much all the nasty bits.
The first thing that we ordered was the Roast pork, this was pretty average roast pork, it wasn’t served on the peanuts like they usually are at Hong kong roast houses. The pork was also served at room temperature so the fat had time to solidify slightly.
The next thing was the BBQ pork buns, these were pretty good however there was far too little filling compared to what I normally like. But i mean even if BBQ pork buns are still bad they are pretty tasty!
Next up were the Har gao, these were actually really good at joy garden, they had huge chunks of prawns in them as opposed to being minced pork.
Then we saw a cart with some sui mai on there so I thought “yeah we gotta get those”. They were alright, nothing special as they were slightly too tightly packed.
Next up were some salt and chilli fried drumsticks. These were tasty but went far too overboard on the salt and didn’t have nearly enough chilli.
The next thing I had a craving for was pork and chive pan fried dumplings. These were great, they weren’t shy with the chive and they had a lot of flavour.
I had checked my phone quickly and as I looked up more food appeared! This time it was some soft shell crab. This was tasty but with all soft shell crab it has a very short shelf life, as soon as it gets the slightest bit warm it just goes chewy and not that appetising. Although while hot this was delicious.
We got some more dumplings!! This time they were soup dumplings, these are dumplings that they put frozen stock in them with minced pork then they steam them. As they are steamed the stock is reconstituted. They are slightly hard to eat but the stock has a lot of flavour!
The waitresses then forced us to eat more food! We got some rice flour rolls filled with prawns. These were terrible, they were overly floury with very little flavour and bland prawns. The sauce did nothing to save these.
Finally it was desert time! I decided to have some mango pudding which they put some condensed milk on there, the pudding was slightly overcooked but the condensed milk saved it and made it pretty tasty.
In summary this was a pretty tasty meal. It isn’t my favourite dim sum place in Perth but it would probably be slightly better than average if I am being critical.
