The Eight
9-13 Hay St
Haymarket, Sydney
Yum cha in the Chinatown area of Sydney is a wonderful way to enjoy lunch. The sheer variety on offer is amazing and The Eight lives up to this. We started our meal with some steamed dumplings. The prawn and garlic chive dumplings were sufficiently transparent to see the green colours through the wrapper. The same applied to the prawn dumplings too. Both had lovely light wrappers and tasty fillings. A delicate dip in the ever-present chilli sauce finished them both off perfectly.
You don’t just have to stay with steamed goodies of course. We love the crunch of the fried options at yum cha. We couldn’t resist the fried prawn dumplings or the crispy prawn and sesame rolls. The latter in particular were so good we even had seconds.
We’re huge duck fans so when the plates of crispy skinned duck rolled past we had to have one. They were a good size and the tender meat had lovely crispy skin on the outside.
Squid tentacles are great. They’re even better when coated in golden batter and deep fried. The plate we had was really good and the squid was nice and tender. We also had some spring rolls. Unlike the usual varieties, these were chicken spring rolls. It was a nice combination that tasted good too.
Dessert is one of the highlights of yum cha. There are plenty of great sweet choices but both the egg custard tarts and the mango pancakes are our favourites. These tarts were still warm and the eggy custard was deliciously sweet. The mango pancakes had a lovely combination of mango and sweetened whipped cream inside them.
It’s hard not to leave a good yum cha very very full. With trolleys full of great looking food constantly rolling by your table it’s easy to just keep grabbing more and more. We always seem to do just this.
The Eight serves up great yum cha. There’s plenty of variety, the trolleys come around very regularly and the food tastes very good. It’s what you want at yum cha!