“We’ve given your table away,” said the Maitre’D.

Admit­tedly Ange and I were run­ning about 10 min­utes late for lunch. But it did get me think­ing, why did I give my phone num­ber to them if they were just going to can­cel my book­ing at the mer­est hint that we wouldn’t show?

Though it wasn’t a good start, the Maitre’D (if he can be called that) did give us another table. He was also kind enough to admon­ish us with a “Next time show up ear­lier” as we walked past him. Prick.

While we waited for Mike and Jus­tine to show — vic­tims of the dreaded Day­light Sav­ings change — we had a chance to watch the restau­rant in full swing. AY Tea­house is bou­tique yum cha for the west­ern cus­tomer. Trol­leys are replaced with trays that the wait­resses carry by hand to each table, sac­ri­fic­ing effi­ciency for style.

The food itself was stan­dard yum cha fare. Though the best thing they had there was only vaguely asian: deep fried chicken wings tossed with salt and spices. Along with the chicken wings, Ange and I tried a few other plates while we waited. The afore­men­tioned wings, prawn dumplings, shark-fin dumplings and chi­nese broc­coli with oys­ter sauce.
We took a break then, after real­is­ing we’d just blown about $40. $10 on the broc­coli dish alone!

When Mike and Jus­tine showed up we shared a plate of salty spiced squid while they grabbed prawn toast, some sort of greasy, rice noodle-wrapped dish and pork dumplings. Dessert, when the tray even­tu­ally came around, was jelly cubes and egg tarts.

The food was good I’ll give it that, but ulti­mately not value for money. Any yum cha bill that creeps into three fig­ures must be looked upon with a cer­tain level of scorn, espe­cially when there’s only four peo­ple at the table.

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