Amah by Ho Jiak in Chatswood has a new Dim Sum afternoon tea on offer. For $39 a person you get a three tier stand with a selection of Malaysian dumplings with creative spins like a dumpling version of Hainanese chicken rice. So what is afternoon tea like here and is it worth trying?
I think it must have taken me all of 2 minutes to respond to Monica's DM to me with Amah by Ho Jiak's new afternoon tea. It hits the sweet spot between my two loves: afternoon tea and dumplings. The afternoon tea is available 7 days a week from 11:30am-3pm with a minimum of 2 people. For $39 a person you get a tiered stand with tea, coffee or hot chocolate but for $59 a person you get unlimited bubbles or sparkling wine. Each booking has to be prepaid in full online prior to your visit although they do allow for walk-ins too.
Monica and I arrive on a hideously windy Sunday afternoon and take a seat and peel off all of our layers. Service is very friendly and they give us the drinks and regular menu too. With the afternoon tea there's a range of Chinese teas as well as coffee and hot chocolate. The cold weather prompts us to order the hot chocolate along with jasmine tea. We also take a look at the cafe drinks menu which is full of really tasty sounding drinks and I order a matcha latte mango and Monica has a taro sparkling coconut water.
Service is lovely but it does seem like they've lost our drinks order because we wait around 15 minutes and our food arrives but there's no sign of drinks at all and we really want to have these with our food. A couple of queries later and they finally bring us the drinks almost half an hour after we sat down.
I love matcha fruit lattes and the mango one is divine, the perfect level of sweetness. The only thing I would change is that the mango is either pureed or the straw given is one of the thicker boba tea straws because most of the mango doesn't fit into a regular straw. The taro coconut water has a thick layer of taro cheesecake on top of coconut water and you mix it up and it becomes a thick, sweet and creamy taro flavoured cold drink.
We then try the afternoon tea tiers. The top layer is the steamed dumpling selection with the vegetarian Buddha's Delight Dumpling with plenty of crispy garlic on top. There's also a chilli crab Har Gao dumpling with a dab of crab meat and chilli sauce on top as well as the Hainan Chicken Siu Mai with a ginger and chilli dipping sauce. I love the little chilli kick from the chilli crab dumplings and the burst of flavour from the Hainan chicken siu mai.
On the fried dumpling tier there are slender satay chicken spring rolls with a satay sauce to dip in on the side-the satay sauce is on the sweeter side. There's also a delicious ball of Salted Duck Egg Prawn Toast which is my favourite of this selection and some deep fried prawn wontons - these come two per serve and are juicy and bouncy textured.
On the bottom tier there are three sweets per person. The first is a shortcrust pastry tart filled with whipped cream and half a strawberry. This is fine albeit not the most exciting item especially compared to the two others. The mango jelly pudding with mango pearls and a dab of cream is nice but it's the third that we both absolutely adore with butterfly pea flower tinted coconut sago pudding and gula melaka that hits the sweet savoury spot every time.
As for the drinks that came with the afternoon tea, the jasmine tea is nice but I really like the hot chocolate that tastes of a rich, good quality chocolate. It's sweet but moreish and I keep sipping on this to keep warm on this chilly day. Also if you have pre-paid for the afternoon tea, check that they take it off your bill because they presented the whole bill to us and we had to point out that we had already paid.
So tell me Dear Reader, how do you feel about pre-paying for your meal? What do you think of this dim sum afternoon tea?
This meal was independently paid for.
Amah by Ho Jiak
Chatswood Interchange Level 3 K1 & K2, 436 Victoria Ave, Chatswood NSW 2067
Afternoon is offered 7 days a week from 11:30am-3pm
https://www.hojiak.com.au/amah/
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