XY Dim Sim Dumpling House

Name: XY Dim Sum Dumpling House
Type: Restaurant. Yum Cha/Asian.
Location: Canberra Croatian/Soccer Club, Deakin
Meal: Lunch
Food et: Lots of little bits..lots...
Cost: $18.80 all you can eat!

If you're after a cheap, all you can eat Yum Cha, then the XY Dumpling House inside the Croatian Club of Canberra or Deakin Football Club (it seems to be both) is for you. What an Asian inspired restaurant is doing in a Croatian club, we'll never know...

Myself and four other friends had been to this all-the-time Yum Cha joint before a few months ago and as I was craving Asain food my friend suggested we try it again.

I arrived to find two of my friends on a giant table (I'd reserved for 6), with a lazy susan in the middle. Got to love a lazy susan! I sat down and watched as waiter after waiter walked straight past us. I'm pretty sure they knew that more people were coming because as soon as the other two arrived, it was plate after plate of little deep fried goodies!

The beauty of this place is that, because you are paying a set price and not by the plate, you can try a bit of everything without thinking you're wasting your money. This would be a great "first time" Yum Cha place - find out what Yum Cha dishes you like by having a go at everything.

For the more seasoned Yum Cha-er, the food at XY will probably not blow your socks off, it's all pretty standard stuff, but the taste is decent for the price you pay. Majority of the stuff is deep friend, with the except of the steamed pork buns (my favourite) and the green vegetables (chinese broccoli, yum!).

If you are a vegetarian, I'd probably try my best to avoid this place - even the spinach dumplings had prawn in them! Although, the deep friend eggplant was quite tasty!

I hate most seafood, so a lot of this stuff was off limits to me. There seemed to be a rather large amount of seafood dishes. I do like squid, however, and my friend demanded we get three plates of the squid - we ended up talking her in to two plates instead...thankfully. The squid was a bit tasteless - could have used much more salt. But I like things salty...which is why I loved their chicken wings!! These would be amazing if you were drunk. Only I wasn't and instead they made me feel sick. Worth. It.

Thankfully the next most common meat type, after Seafood, was pork. Love me some pork! Apart from the steamed pork bun, they offered a deep friend pork bun (which for some reason was freezing cold - more like it had been de-frosted then cooked...), diced pork (very fatty) and a rice noodle wrap with pork filling. I quite enjoyed the rice noodle wraps, much more then I liked their beef counterpart.

For dessert we had mango pudding and coconut jelly. These were delicious, and not too sweet - just the way I like. Although, I probably should have forgone these treats as it was the nail in my stomach coffin and I went from being full to being sick. The walk out of the restaurant and to the car park was hard. Very hard. It's two hours later and I still feel like I am going to vomit.

Definitely ate my money's worth...

Verdit: You get what you pay for. Most of the food is probably frozen stuff you could get at a supermarket, with a few exceptions - like the desserts, which I am sure are made there. But $18.80 to get together and stuff your faces is quite good value. And the food is edible, just not amazing. The service was quick and even though their English was not fantastic, they were quite sweet and if we had to flag them down for something extra, they would always quickly oblige.