NO, I’m not asking you to take an actual trip to Hong Kong to know about “conveyor delights,” but to take a look-see at this dimsum and tea bar in Ayala Terraces.
A new player in the food trade, Tsim Sha Tsui (TST) gives dimsum lovers a new way of partaking of their favorite little delights: a conveyor belt brings the dishes to the diner who patronizes its “eat all you can” offer.
All he has to do is to stand by the conveyor belt and pick out what catches his fancy. Since it is eat all you can, he can pick out as many dishes as he wants.
But the place also has an ala carte menu. So you can just comfortably sit in your chair, order your food and wait for the courteous waiter to bring your order to you.
While waiting, you can enjoy the ambiance of the place as envisioned by fashion designer Philip Rodriguez. Yes, he—with some other family members—is also now into food! The walls are in stark white and off-white gray, the chairs and seats in lime green and fuchsia, plus a wall “:étagère” with an assortment of tea pots and tea cups, TST also being a tea bar. Soon, it will even have a tea that blossoms in your tea cup right before your eyes!
In the menu and on the conveyor belt are standard dimsum dishes like quail egg siu mai, siu-mai pork, empress roll, chicken feet (which is one of the favorites at TST, and which it also sells, like its sauces, for take out), east ocean shrimp on toast, hoi sweet and sour pork, stuffed taro and steamed fried rice, which is actually a meal all by itself, with a lot of ingredients mixed into the rice.
Not found in other dimsum places are some items like fan quo, which is minced meat, shrimp and cilantro wrapped in rice flour; Hainan spring roll, which is vermicelli and carrots wrapped in spring roll wrapper and served with sweet and chili vinegar; Jordan’s hot shrimps with garlic sauce; three types of mushrooms (button, straw and black) with broccoli in oyster sauce; Hainan chicken rice, which is chicken leg topped with rice wine, soy with salted ginger, hot sauce and sautéed green onions and oil; lomai gai (lotus leaf rice), which is sticky rice with meat and wrapped in lkotuse leaf (which Philip explains is what the Chinese used to carry with them as food-to-go on long trips); and fish triangle soup, which is fish quenelle infused in broth.
There are a lot more dimsum dishes to discover and savor in the restaurant, all of which go nicely with an assortment of teas, both hot and cold: particularly refreshing is the cold cucumber tea.