A Happy Gathering @ Happy Gathering Chinese Restaurant

*entered in Retrospect*

On the second day of Joy's visit, we went to Happy Gathering Chinese Restaurant for dim sum. Happy Gathering is one of the best chinese restaurant in Cardiff serving Dim Sum in the daytime and normal chinese dishes in the evening. Dim sum is a type of Chinese food that involves small portions of food served in small steamer baskets or small plates. The fun of it is that we can share and try many different dishes with friends at the same time.

Pot of chinese tea

Egg tarts

Egg tarts are pastries filled with a concoction containing eggs and then baked. They are a bit like the custart tarts we normally have. The smooth texture of the egg with the biscuit-like texture of the pastry makes it a very nice dish!

Coconut Pudding

A very nice and refreshing dessert dish made of coconut milk. The texture is soft and jelly-like and the nice fragrance from coconut makes it an irresistable pudding!

Char Siew Puffs

Char Siew (roast pork) puffs are very nice with a sweet and a bit of chargrilled taste to the roast pork inside the pastry. The pastry is puffy and cripsy, very nice taste and texture.

House Special cirspy fried noodles

The house special crispy fried noodles, I must say, is not as good this time. Normally we would have more meat and vegetable served with the noodles and the noodles are normally much crispier. This time it was below par as the noodles were a little bit too soggy and clumped together. Perhaps they will do better next time.

'Shui Mai'

Shui Mai is one of my favourite dishes. It is made of pork meat and prawns wrapped in 'skin' made of flour then steamed. Super yummy!      

'Har Gao'

Har Gao (Prawn Dumplings) is made of several prawns wrapped in a thin and transparent flour skin steamed in those tiny steamer baskets.

Table full of food

Szechuan Fried Buns

The Szechuan style fried buns were buns filled with minced pork and coriander then shallow fried. The dish was then garnished with spring onions. The saltiness of the minced pork and flavour from the coriander goes really well with the crispy shallow fried buns.

The inside of the buns

Steamed Pork Ribs

Another one of my favourites is the Steamed pork ribs. They were small pieces of pork ribs steamed with Douchi (fermented black beans), a popular flavouring in Chinese dishes, and some chilli pieces.

Fried Squid

Fried Squid (or Calamari), Chinese style. The long, thin slices of squid were deep fried in batter and served with white vinegar.  Great combination and very delicious!

'Deep fried dumpling'

These deep fried dumplings called 咸水角 in Chinese are absolutely delicious! They were made of glutinous rice stuffed with small pieces of pork or dried prawns then deep fried. This gives a very crunchy outer layer, then a crunchy inner layer, then you get all these flavours from the small pieces of meat inside. Yummy!

Overall, a nice meal even though it was rather oily for our liking!