Mum is cantonese and having yumcha or dianxin is a norm. Yumcha literally means ‘drink tea’ and dianxin means ‘little bits of heart’. I usually have bo lei ( a strong black tea) as it is known to aid digestion! Yumcha places are usually buzzing with people and trolleys. It is not so at Goldleaf (infront of the Observation Wheel, Docklands) for obvious reasons. The Wheel is currently non-operational due to structural defects and in the midst of major recovery. Reason number 2 will be explained further in this post.
We started off with har gao (prawn dumpling), siewmai (open pork wanton) and chives dumplings. I could help but compare these with the ones that I had at Mahjong. The dough was not as refine and the fillings were pasty.
Chives dumpling
Carrot cake was next on the list. It is pretty good! Not drenched in oil and quite light. 
One up for Goldleaf after the fairly disappointing start.
Carrot cake
The steam pork ribs was juicy but I will prefer if I was biting into more meat than pork fats. It was lacking in flavour and being more generous with femented black beans may do the trick!
Steam pork rib with black bean
Another favourite of mine was dimsum style chicken feet or ‘phoenix talons’ (translation from Cantonese). There is no meat but just skin & tendons. This dish needs to be cooked and the feet left to soak up the marinate overnight. Once you get the hang of eating this, breaking and sucking the little bones can be rather addictive. I know it is gross but that is how it should be eaten! However, Goldleaf did not deliver in flavour or texture. It lacked the depth in spices and sweetness that chicken feet should have.
Chicken feet
The disappointment did not stop here. We ordered the Shark fins dumpling soup and it took a while to arrive so we had an expectation that it must be pretty good. Alas, the broth was full of MSG that made my tongue went dry and there was no shark fins in the dumpling…. basically, it was just pork dumpling soup. The photo below tells a story.
Shark fins dumpling soup
This place offers a huge dim sum variety and affordable. Dishes can be ordered from a menu and the dessert trolley did look colourful and pretty. I am sure one cannot go wrong with mango pudding or sweeten silk tofu.
Mango pudding
This is my reason number 2 of why this place is not buzzing with life in a typical yumcha place. The meal did leave me a little unsatisfied but always made better by having good company and conversations. And a bit of shopping around harbour city was a good way to walk off all the food that we ate!
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thanks for the heads up! over there now!
I typically dont publish insite but you Forced me to, drooling
i can tell you don’t really know much about yum cha.. shark fin dumplings is just the name of the dumpling.. it has never and is not suppose to include real shark fin. just like the chicken feet, its name in chinese translates directly as phoenix claw, but obviously it is chicken and not phoenix and a person who suggests that their phoenix claw didn’t have phoenix in it is as silly as your mistake in this blog.