Yum Yum Cha Cafe

Recommends

mizzv

Joined 4 years ago

Delish, made to order dimsum...in the Village!. We loved this place! It has pictures on the menu so it's easier to order if you're unfamliar w/dimsum than ordering off the carts in the Chinatown restaurants. Our waitress was also really friendly & helpful. We ordered shrimp steamed dumplings, pork & shrimp dumplings, eggplant stuffed w/shrimp, turnip cakes, taro balls, pork ribs, & mango pudding. The dishes were delicious & authentic, though the ribs were a little fattier than I'd prefer. Next time we'll have the egg tart dessert. What I really liked is that items are made to order - rare for dimsum. Usually you can only get dimsum at lunch on weekends when it's busy enough to sell items quickly off carts. This restaurant also felt very clean and the 2 of us were stuffed on less than $20 (including dessert!). Finally, you can't beat the location!

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IronChefDavis

Joined 3 years ago

Yummy in my tummy. I have been here numerous times, mostly after Sunday services and I am always impressed with this restaurant that serves dim sum all day. After learning what dim sum was on my trip to San Francisco, I returned to Houston to find this quaint little restaurant that only holds about 20 people. I was pleasantly surprised by the food and their wide selection despite their small size. I think that the most wonderful part of this restaurant is the pictures of the food in their flip book menu to help you not only decide on what you want to eat, but to help you remember what you have eaten before. The one of the only downsides to this restaurant is the lack of parking. The other is that it is sometimes the waiting time for tables to open up can be extensive.

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JSiobhan

Joined 5 years ago

Yum Yum Yeah. I love, love, love everything here. . . but my favorite is the Sesame Balls. The service is outstandng! My husband and I dine here every week!

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gizelled

Joined 4 years ago

LOVE THIS PLACE!!!. I have to disagree with some of the negative comments on here. I've tried dim sum at various places around town but Yum Yum Cha is definitely a family favorite and we've been going here for years. We've never experienced bad or rude service and we are Asian so I find it completely ignorant that someone would insinuate that race would be a reason for rudeness.

The staff is small but they go out of their way. The food is really delicious and consistently so.

Our favorites include: Shrimp and Chive cake, Shrimp stuffed eggplant and Chrysanthemum tea!

Doesn't Recommend

Ontarget

Joined 4 years ago

Worst experience in worldwide dining. I hosted a family meal on Sunday afternoon, 3/29/2009 at this quaint establishment. One of our orders was for the pork and peanut dumplings, a highly regarded item per numerous reviews. My daughter ate her's then alerted me to a maggot (yes, a fly's immature larva) that was on her plate.

I notified the front of the house staff, received a week excuse that this was instead a caterpillar (this was better?), but my years in law enforcement qualifies me to know the difference. We were given the opportunity to leave without a check.

I notified the City and a quick inspection this morning, 3/30, turned up minor violations, which could be expected due to horrific nature of the Sunday experience. I leave it to your imagination where offending foodstuff went before the inspector arrived.

Just a note. Our family traveled China extensively in 2007, never experiencing a problem with food handling, preparation or safety. It is sad that we discover that Houston fell flat on it's face at the heart of such a vibrant area of our community.

Doesn't Recommend

feedme123

Joined 4 years ago

Unbelievable!. Did this place switch owners? I have not been in a while but wanted to treat some friends to dim sum. The five of us walked in and I immediately see four empty tables and one guy sitting at a table for six. Well, the owner refused to put two tables together. We offered to sit at a table for four but were refused. The waitress said that was the owner's orders but said she can take our names and give us a call when a table opens up. Needless to say, we left and none of us will ever return again.

Doesn't Recommend

vivacleo

Joined 9 years ago

Could have been really good. The location is great since it's not in the traffic mess of most Dim Sum places. There's normally no crowds. We had three bad experiences before we just had enough. All three were hair incidents. One was a short black hair in the cup of soda. A sip hadn't even been taken and the waitress gave us a dirty look. Then we found hair in our shu mai. And the last time they were so rude to us when we walked in, probably because we pointed out the previous hair incidents, we just left. It would have been awesome to have a dim sum place in Rice Village but the food isn't good enough to keep patronizing such rude people and mediocre food hygiene.

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phaedracook

Joined 11 years ago

Remarkably Flavorful, Authentic Dim Sum. When I stepped into this Rice Village hole in the wall, I had some trepidation that I had stumbled on a place that serves dumbed-down dim sum for the uninitiated. Boy, was I wrong about that. My friends and I ordered a table full of food, and there was NOTHING on the table that I didn't like. The almond rice cakes were light and fluffy. The turnip cakes actually had flavor and tasted like (gasp) turnip! Everywhere else I've had these, they tasted like bland taro root. The egg custard tarts had a bit of crispiness to the outsides that was a very nice compliment to the creamy, sweet, eggy filing.

Service was not great, but not bad either. Prices were extremely reasonable.

We WILL be going back.

Doesn't Recommend

ksangyay

Joined 4 years ago

Rude Rude Rude!. The staff and who I think is the owner (the tired-looking lady who never smiles) are extremely, painfully rude! I've been here several times and I've learned that the staff is not the friendliest, but I've just accepted it because of my craving for dim sum. This past experience, however, was the worst- enough to never eat there again no matter how desperate my craving for dim sum is. The staff seemed to be decently friendly to the other patrons, but for our table (maybe because we are Asian...?) the staff would roll their eyes whenever we asked for more hot oil or some other hot sauce! They would obviously ROLL their EYES!!! We tried to be polite, thanking them whenever they served us, but their cold hearts would just reject it. I guess the restaurant just makes too much money and wants to slow down the business. We've never received four-star service to begin with, but this was the final straw. NEVER AGAIN! The food is average... but not tasty enough to trump the horrific service the restaurant provides. All my friends and I will now boycott this hell hole of a place.

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houston_aggie

Joined 6 years ago

Decent dim sum when you can't get to Bellaire. I tried this place on a Friday afternoon for lunch. They have a little flipbook with all the dim sum choices and photos. Really helpful if you're a first-timer. I must say, the portions and sizes of the dim sum pieces are quite small for the price in comparison to what you get at Ocean Palace or Kim Son. You can definitely count on this place to satisfy your dim sum craving if you are too lazy to make it out to Bellaire or you want it on a weekday. Otherwise, it's much more worth it to endure the hustle and bustle of chinetown for the real deal.