Jesse Mulligan Restaurant Review: Grand Harbour Yum Cha At Auckland’s Viaduct Is The Place To Go For Dim Sum

I’ve eaten yum cha from Hong Kong to Hamilton, and it’s always good, but it took a visit to Grand Harbour to realise that this quaint and lovely style of eating has the potential to be great.

The secret is in the scale. There must be room for 100 people in Grand Harbour’s Viaduct dining room, which means they can send out a dozen of those stainless steel food trolleys at a time. This leads to traffic jams, three-point turns and, presumably, the occasional steamy pileup. Yet the overriding impression is of efficiency – everybody gets a look at everything, and when a group of diners finally gets up, bloated and dozy, at the end of their meal, a team of professionals swoops in and turns over the table as if they’re cleaning up a crime scene.

These economies of scale are self-perpetuating. The more people eat here, the fresher the food; the fresher the food, the more people eat here. At some point, you become THE place in Auckland to go for dim sum (evidence: former All Black Taine Randell was at the table next to me), and the whole experience goes up another notch. And if that all sounds like it happens by accident, we should remember that it requires a huge, skilful team of managers, chefs and waiters to manage growth and maintain quality.

Grand Harbour seems like a place where the wealthy and the working class eat shoulder to shoulder. Plates are reasonably priced (closer to Barilla than Blue Breeze, with food sometimes as fancy as the latter), but there is really room to push the boat out when it comes to wine – the first page of the menu lists different vintages of Chateau Petrus, beginning at $8000. There is also a seafood tank, which I presume is attached to the a la carte menu (if they were pushing around a tiny busful of live lobsters, I’m afraid I missed it) and would add a few hundred dollars to the bill the moment a waiter’s arm plunged into the water.

The food is just lovely. Yum cha is always a crowd pleaser, but there is a massive range of options here beyond the dumplings and bao buns that typify the genre. It was a couple of rice dishes that stood out to me: one, a sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves which was filled with so much flavour and texture I could not stop hitting it; the second, a rice congee – subtle but soothing and moreish, with the occasional piece of pork in a mouthful but mostly seasoned as you prefer, with the soy sauce and chili oil that come complementary at every table.

Dumplings are delicate, translucent and beautiful, with the vegetarian option in particular packed with textured delights. They also offer “soup dumplings”, which are a little tricky to peel off the parchment but, if you get it right, quiver on your spoon until you bite in and release the wholesome broth.

The vegetarian at our table managed okay, though she had to dodge the fragments of pork that showed up almost everywhere, even in the delicious tofu skin-wrapped vegetables. And of course there is the famous Cantonese roast pork, which you can eat room temperature, straight off the plate, or in a pork bun – though possibly not as you’re imagining it; the best buns here are baked rather than steamed: light and fluffy, with a sweet-savoury meaty centre and their tops glazed with egg wash and sugar syrup and cooked til shiny golden-brown.

Anything to improve on? Well, more some missed opportunities, I think. For somebody unfamiliar with the culture of dim sum and new to some of the food, you don’t learn a lot by visiting. Dishes are offered hurriedly with little information even when you ask, and I wonder if (fairly obvious) newcomers might enjoy the experience more if Grand Harbour had someone come over to your table, offer you some patient guidance and point you to some favourites and hidden treasures.

I emailed asking for more detail on some of the dishes, and for the first time ever received no reply. Doing research myself, I found quite a useful page on Grand Harbour’s website about yum cha, including this gem: “Drinking Chinese tea is an important part of the experience. When the teapot needs to be refilled, the customer need only leave the lid up at a diagonal, and it will be taken away and returned full.”

Now I know. The food will taste as good no matter what you know about it, and of course you can shop with your eyes. But there is so much more to yum cha than what you’re eating; a little research beforehand will be time well spent.

Grand Harbour

Cuisine: Yum cha

Address: Cnr Pakenham St East and Customs St West

Contact: 09 357 6889

Reservations: Accepted

From the menu: BBQ pork, stuffed tofu skin, spring roll, vegetable dumplings, shrimp dumplings, soup dumplings, rice congee, sticky rice, pork buns (baked), meatballs, mango pancake, custard tart, jelly ($9.50-$11.50 per dish)

Rating: 17/20

Score: 0-7 Steer clear. 8-12 Disappointing, give it a miss. 13-15 Good, give it a go. 16-18 Great, plan a visit. 19-20 Outstanding, don’t delay.

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