Ocean City Restaurant
Niki Bezzant
Ocean City Restaurant
201 Victoria St West
Auckland
Ph: 379 2760
There are many great places to get yum cha in Auckland. We're spoiled that way (see list at the bottom of this page). But for sheer scale and entertainment value, I like the Ocean City.
It's not a traditional yum cha restaurant; there are no servers walking around here with dim sum from which to pick and choose. Ocean City is a yum cha buffet. Now before you turn up your nose, let me say that normally I, too, will avoid any suggestion of a buffet unless I'm at a wedding. But this one is really fun. And the food's good, too!
Upon entering Ocean City, you pay the laughable sum of $9.90 per person (in a slightly strange system, kids under 1.2 metres tall are $5; presumably once they hit that height their legs become hollow and they eat as much as an adult). You are then escorted to your table, served Chinese tea and left to survey the scene and devise your plan of attack. Polite signs urge customers not to eat too much; if you leave too much food behind on your plate you can be charged extra. No chance of that for me; my strategy is many trips for small platefuls, and repeat until full.
The soup station is not a bad place to start; you can literally build your own soup starting from a base of chicken stock or corn soup, and add noodles, veges, dumplings and seasoning. Once that's done, you could move on to the huge bamboo steaming baskets containing the old faithful (and delicious) steamed pork buns. Don't pass the grill by, where a server cooks up tender grilled eggplant and fish cakes.
On the main table you'll find pretty much everything you can expect from a regular yum cha restaurant. There is an array of prawn, pork and vegetable dumplings and wontons, rice paper rolls, succulent roast duck, chicken feet, grilled squid, fried rice and noodles, spring rolls, preserved eggs, tripe - it's all here. For the kids there are chips and little sausages if they really can't be persuaded to try anything else; a considerate touch.
At least a third of the main table is taken up with dessert items; fruit salad, custards and an array of glutinous sweets, some of which are, for me at least, a bit of an aquired taste. I don't need dessert anyway - I'm happy to graze my way to satiety on savoury treats.
Yum cha is a great way to lunch when you really don't know what you want; and the Ocean City is the perfect yum cha when you're in a group who can't agree on what they want. I promise, everyone will leave happy.
Yum cha runs at Ocean City every day between 11.00am and 2.30pm.
Other Great Auckland Yum Cha restaurants:
Ding How Chinese Restaurant
55 Albert St (entrance off St Patrick's Square,) City, Ph 358 4838
According to devotees, the best traditional yum cha in town. It's reasonably hard to get in some lunchtimes - go early.
Mandarin Seafood Restaurant
98 Albert St, City, Ph 377 2886
Small, compared to some of the other cavernous yum cha places around, but consistently good and incredibly well priced. The staff here don't speak much English, so sometimes you have to take a punt on what's in things - but that's half the fun.
Pearl Garden Dim Sim Restaurant
1 Teed St, Newmarket, Ph 523 3696
A Newmarket institution.
Dynasty Chinese Restaurant
57-59 Wakefield St, Auckland, Ph 0-9-358 5396
A vast space which is always busy. A great place to take a large group for yum cha. 
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