Ume Yummy, Winnipeg's Hong Kong Cafe

Traditionally the term Hong Kong Cafe refers to a style of Chinese restaurant featuring quick, simple and refreshing plates geared towards the hungry lunch-time crowd or the early riser brunch crowd. Doing away with the extravagance of large Chinese set dinners or the large time investment needed for dim sum, diners can feed on traditional and tasty meals in a quick and reasonably priced manner. You can see why then these places started taking off. Spearheading a foray into the Winnipeg market, a new such cafe had opened up on the south side of the city, Ume Yummy.

A word of warning: there is a high chance you might miss this restaurant. Hidden literally across the corner in a small stripmall of stores, Ume Yummy is first a house and second a restaurant. With nary a banner or advertising on the complex itself, one would be hard pressed to realize that a restaurant existed on first glance. Indeed it is only when you see the billboards on the street lights that we recognized that yes, we were in the right place! Externally aside though, Ume Yummy is actually a converted Korean BBQ restaurant (surprise indeed!) with hastily covered central barbeque pits and with still an aroma of grilled meats. With that said, the owners actually do a nice job of creating a pleasant and appealing restaurant with scenic decor, ample lighting and roomy dining tables. Certainly some wrinkles still need to be ironed out, but this was far from uncomfortable.

The menu is classic HK cafe featuring a vast array of dishes that can only be described as spanning the vast cuisines of China. The thrust of their menu is focused upon their noodle combinations gives the diner a litany of options from seven soup bases, another seven types of noodles and a mind numbing number of toppings available to create ones favourite and perfect bowl of soup. Aside from the noodles are numerous rice combinations and appetizer small dishes. Prices were more than reasonable, you have to try to spend to more than $10 per dish!

With so much effort placed in their noodles, we had to a Noodle Combo to try. Here we took the Chicken Broth Soup, combined it with Rice Noodles topped with Sliced Beef Brisket and Fish Tofu. The broth, the most important part of the dish, was actually very nice with a rich and deep chicken flavour that permeated through the tender but cooked rice noodles; and while the toppings were simply average, fatty but bland brisket and chewy but small pieces of fish tofu, the entire culmination of the dish was appealing and tasty. Definition recommended for a rainy or cold day.

Jumbo Mom's Soup Dumplings has quite the name, yet barely lived up to the expectation. The big problem here were the dumplings themselves, mushy and mostly devoid of filling, what should have been tender pasta with hot steaming soup and filling turned into a bland and soft bowl of mush. Even though the seafood broth underneath was surprisingly good with tons of earthy undertones, the dumplings themselves ruined the entire experience.

I always advocate on trying as many of a restaurant's specialties as possible, and so could not pass on the opportunity to try a Curry Beef Brisket on Rice. Purists be noted, this is a Hong Kong style take on English UK curry and so was only a curry by name and by the dried "curry" spices used here. Truthfully, there was very little of the richness or depth of traditional curries and too much instant powder mix. A shame too because the vegetables and pieces of brisket were tender and well cooked.

Whatever possessed me to order more food took hold and out came another, XO Rice Rolls. Despite bearing the XO Sauce moniker, these rice rolls were unfortunately bland and devoid of flavour. Oily and greasy, these rolls needed a much needed dash of soy sauce to bring together the sauce and rolls. A complete disaster of a dish.

Although a good attempt at creating a traditional Hong Kong Cafe, Ume Yummy ultimately does not have the food quality to recommend. And while there are aspects of each dish (minus the rice rolls) that serve as a good base, basic mistakes make this an disappointing dining experience.