There really isn't too much difference having yam cha (飲茶) at a good yam cha restaurant in Japan and a good yam cha restaurant anywhere else in the world. Each restaurant is different, and they do certain things better than others, but over-all, I would rate the good places with approval, except for the price. The prices here are truly mind-bloggling!
One example would be Hong Kong Tea House in Roppongi Hills. But that that is not the subject of this blog. Instead, the subject of this particular entry is the yam cha restaurant in Yokohama known as 萬珍樓點心舗 (manchinro tenshinpo).
What can I say, the dim sum served is generally pretty good, but I'm probably not keen to go back there again. Why? Because the food is really expensive for what you get. For example, the roast duck costs something like 1,200 Yen, and this is what you get for it:
Granted, the food was very nice, with the individual dishes ranging from excellent to decent, depending on the thing you ordered, but the prices were out of this world. Figure to spend about 650-750 Yen for normal dim sum with typically 3 dumplings per serving. I would avoid the shanghai dumplings (小籠包; shouronpo) though, coz quite frankly, they weren't that great and there are better and cheaper restaurants for that kind of stuff.
However, I really did enjoy the pig's trotters and some of the other dishes, and the restaurant claims to be entirely MSG free, so people who suffer reactions from MSG overdose would do well to eat there.
Summary: dim sim varying from between great to decent, but really expensive. There are better things I can spend my money on (like matsutake mushrooms and wagyu beef) than this.
