Sai Kung Cafe Exeter: Our pitstop in Devon for Dim Sum

On the junction of Verney Street and Summerland Street in Exeter is a Chinese restaurant that serves traditional roast duck, pork and char siew with noodles or rice and Dim Sum. On our way back from Cornwall on a Sunday afternoon, we decided on a quick stop over for lunch.

Sai Kung Cafe, Exeter

Sunday lunch times are typically reserved for family gatherings to ‘yum cha’ which translates literally to drink tea. To ‘yum cha’ though is more than to just drink, it is usually a time to get together and catch up with close friends and family and exchange news and gossip while wolfing down an inordinate amount of dim sum yummies.

Dim Sum

At Sai Kung Exeter, we ordered our usual steamed dim sum favourites – har kow, siew mai and cheong fun. Portion sizes for all of them were generous although they were more ‘meant to fill’ than ‘delicacy’ standard. The Siew Mai were large dumplings topped with fish roe to give it that well-known orange tinge (sometimes achieved with salted duck egg yolks). The Har Kow were large in size although the skin was a bit on the thick side, the prawns inside were well flavoured and generous in size.

Check out Sai Kung Exeter’s full menu here.

In addition to our usual favourites, we also ordered chicken feet braised in soya sauce and pork spare ribs with black beans.

What do chicken feet actually taste like?

Baked and fried Dim Sum dishes worth trying are the char siew saw (Char Siu BBQ Pork Puff) and deep fried beancurd roll with prawn.

Har Kay Prawn Dumplings

Siu Mai Pork and Prawn Dumplings

Chicken Feet in Black Bean Sauce

Spare Ribs in Black Bean Sauce

Deep Fried Beancurd Roll with Prawn and Steamed Prawn Cheung Fun

We were going to order the Three Roast (Duck, Pork Belly and Char Siew) from their standard Roast menu but got the order wrong and ended up with the roast in soupy for fun noodle instead.