7.236

28 (Sat) August 2016

Yum Cha

3.5

at Li Li

(see most recently 7.121 Steamed King Prawn…)

-New World Manila Bay, Manila-

with the family

In the Chinese culinary tradition, yum cha is a light meal involving dim sum and tea — “yum (飲) = drink” + “cha (茶) = tea”** — typically sometime between late morning and early afternoon, like brunch.

I can’t recall ever hearing the term “yum cha” in the States, even while living near the country’s biggest Chinatowns in the SF Bay Area, New York, Los Angeles — just something along the lines of : “Let’s do dim sum for brunch.” — though the usage is mainstream in the Philippines.

Technically, “dim sum” — “dim (點) = touch” + “sum (心) = heart” — refers specifically to the food itself, not the occasion.

Conversely, as noted in a post very long ago (see 2.333 Roast Duck), the Chinese characters for “dim sum” are read in Korean as “jeom (점) sim (심)” and refer generally to the occasion of the lunchtime meal, regardless of composition.

(To find that post, it didn’t come up in the many many searches that I tried.  Then, recalling that Number One Fan LY had dropped a snarky remark about the etymology of “jeomsim” being  “the first … useful bit of info” in the blog, I combed for over an hour through archived comments, finally recovering it on the 21st of 30 pages, the 2,098th of 2,955 comments (from the old host on blogspot).

The characters for “yum cha” would be read in Korean as “eum (음) cha (차),” though that combination doesn’t actually exist.

Any, way.

Li Li offers an all-u-can-eat yum cha at midday.

Fairly pricey at 1,850 PHP per person, plus 12% service charge, I had two free coupons from my membership card.

The food was awesome.   Nothing stood out in particular, some items better than others, but everything held its own, making for a fine spread across the board.  Li Li, never disappointing.  Too bad that they don’t do this for dinner.

In fact, because this was lunch, I didn’t start off taking photos — as a general rule, I don’t take photos of lunch.  But after the first round, I quickly decided that it deserved to be highlighted as the featured meal of today’s post.  More photos next time, for sure.