Chooi Yue Dim Sum Ipoh

With a majority of the Chinese speaking Cantonese in Ipoh, having dim sum for breakfast is one of the common practices. Due to the love of breakfast dim sum, Ipoh has countless dim sum restaurants, both big and small, packed with hungry customers for their morning tea session

As I wanted to try out a new dim sum place in Ipoh, I selected Chooi Yue Dim Sum which is quite highly rated by locals. Located about 15 minutes away from the touristy Chinatown area, Chooi Yue is visited mostly by locals who stay around the area

Occupying 2 storeys of the building, Chooi Yue has plenty of space to accommodate the breakfast crowd. On weekends, there is still a long queue so do expect to wait for a table. When we got to the restaurant, we took a queue number from the staff and waited close to 10 minutes before we got a table on the 2nd floor. I was expecting to wait longer but the speed of clearing tables was rather fast. The decor of the restaurant was Chinese inspired with lanterns and traditional wooden door frames and chairs

The variety on the menu was endless and you totally get spoilt for choice. We started off with some of the usual steamed dim sum like siew mai, har gow, steamed pork ribs, steamed phoenix claw ( braised chicken feet ) and prawn rice rolls. The serving speed of the food after putting in the order was relatively fast although some popular items take a longer wait. The steamed items were packed full of ingredients like pork and prawn paste but the flavours were pretty general and nothing too fancy. The prawns were not crunchy enough in both the rice roll and the har gow

The next batch of items served were the fried items like pan-fried carrot cake, fried seafood roll with mayonnaise, fried yam dumpling, prawn dumpling with fried vermicelli and seafood beancurd roll with sweet and sour sauce. Most of the fried items were great with nice savoury flavours and were extremely crispy yet non-greasy. The only item I could not get used to was the fried beancurd seafood roll which is usually served with a oyster flavoured sauce instead of sweet and sour sauce which was a little too sweet for me

Nex we ordered some of the highly recommended items on the menu which include the salted egg lava bun, fried char siew bun and X.O sauce fried fish noodles. Different from the usual lava buns, their version is fried and has a layer of pandan paste layered with the lava salted egg filling which was both sweet and salty at the same time. This was really delicious which is why every table has at least 1 order. The fried char siew buns were nice as well but the buns were not fluffy enough. I have tried fried buns where the skin was crispy but the inside was still fluffy so I feel this was not my favourite. The XO sauce fried fish noodles were cooked in the same manner as XO fried carrot cake which is commonly found in Singapore dim sum restaurants. The only difference was the use of fish noodles which were fat springy noodles with the taste and texture of fishballs. The flavours were refreshing with different layers of texture from the beansprouts, spring onions, carrots and fish noodles. This was also another dish which can be found on every table

Lastly, after gorging on all the food, we managed to find space for dessert as the ones from the neighbouring tables looked so good. We ordered the egg pudding and osmanthus jelly which were both quite nice. I preferred the osmanthus jelly as the egg pudding was slightly sweet for me

Overall, the atmosphere at Chooi Yue is cool with local families gathering for their weekend tea session ( yum cha in Cantonese ) and the vast variety of items on their menu is enough to make anyone happy. While the dim sum is not fine dining top-notch quality, the flavours are catered for the masses and at pocket-friendly prices. In comparison with popular places like Ming Court or Foh San which are always brimming with tourists, it is worth visiting Chooi Yue for a more localised experience

Address: 2, 4 & 6, Tingkat Taman Ipoh 12, Taman Ipoh Selatan, 31400 Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia

Opening hours: 7 am to 1 pm ( closed on Thurs)