Citi Zen Restaurant — Restaurant in Adelaide

The quality of the food was fine, and the quantity is enough. However, the price was actually too high. There are still other options for yum cha restaurant in Adelaide.

Yum cha (simplified Chinese: 饮茶; traditional Chinese: 飲茶; pinyin: yǐn chá[1]; Jyutping: jam2 caa4; Cantonese Yale: yám chà; lit. "drink tea"), also known as going for dim sum, is the Cantonese tradition of brunch involving Chinese tea and dim sum. The practice is popular in Cantonese-speaking regions, including Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, and Macau. It is also carried out in other regions worldwide where there are overseas Chinese communities, like Vietnam and the United States.

Yum cha generally involves small portions of steamed, pan-fried, and deep-fried dim sum dishes served in bamboo steamers, which are designed to be eaten communally and washed down with tea.[2] People often go to yum cha in large groups for family get-togethers or celebrations.

Yum cha in the Chinese language, both literary and vernacular, literally means "drink tea". This character (飲) means "drink". This character (茶) means "tea". The phrase dim sum is sometimes used in place of yum cha. Dim sum is the English word based on a Cantonese pronunciation of 點心. In colloquial Mandarin dialects and Standard Vernacular Chinese based on one form of colloquial Mandarin, this character (喝) is often used to mean 飲 for the verb "drink". In the Chinese language, 點心 refers to a variety of foods, including European-style cakes and pastries, and has no equivalent in English. In the English language, dim sum refers to the small-dish appetizers and desserts in Chinese, especially Cantonese, cuisine, whereas yum cha refers to the act of having a meal typically involving...

went in for dim sum brunch

For those who are familiar with the concept of waiters offering dishes before the customers before dlthe customer decides what they want, I'd say this is pretty lacklustre in terms of the number of eating staff available. Service could make do with improvements in awareness of waiting staff of patrons and must do for each table when seated.

Went in as a pair of customer, didn't get as much attention as I would like in terms of getting the setup of the table such as tea and condiments. It took up to three waiters to get all these.

Food carts don't approach us as the table gaps are not optimal and only a handful of waiters coming out of the kitchen with dishes offered us anything.

Only after having about seven dishes after half an hour that a waiter offered to get us a menu list, which before this we had to use our own knowledge of dishes available and whatever dish that waiters push out from the kitchen. I even mentioned to a waiter that I would like to order more food seeing that food aren't getting pushed out in front of us, I wouldn't know what is available to order, and I don't know there is actually a menu (order list). Even then we had to wait for another 10 minutes to find out one of the items we ordered aren't available. It took another 15 minutes waiting for the rest of the order, as we are ready to leave at this point we asked to cancel the order and the waiter told us that we can't since it's already been prepared. It took another 10 minutes to get an item...

This is about the Yum Cha (I've reviewed the main menu here before: 'turn to the back pages of the menu for the good stuff'.)

I'm calling this the best Yum Cha in Adelaide: I'm not a fan of Ding Hao and Star House - they are like factories and the food lacks finesse. T-Chow used to be elegant but recently it seems to be losing the plot.

Citi Zen offers an amazing selection of dian xin, and you'll never manage to taste them all: at least two types of tripe; stuffed eggplant with Bonito flakes (worth the trip to Adelaide on its own); sticky rice dim sum (you won't see that in many places around the world); a mixed seafood open dumpling with roe (stunning flavours); even the pork dumplings, standard fare, are deliciously meaty and savoury.

Fried fish cakes, fried prawn cakes, green beans with garlic (cold, sweet and crunchy), radish fried with omelette, spinach dumplings, all the usual suspects, and a host more.

Good tea, too: ask for the pu er.

Only gripes - no obvious on-line booking facility, and you need to book unless you arrive early; and some of the dim sum stick tenaciously to the paper doily. First world problems.

Seven years later: they have online booking

It is still an amazing place for yum cha, and the eggplant with bonito flakes is still what Michelin would say is...