Maxim’s Palace City Hall Hong Kong – Dim Sum Trolleys

Maxim’s Palace City Hall is a restaurant that shows up in quite a number of results when we searched for best restaurants for dim sum in Hongkong during out recent visit to the Fragrant Harbour. This Chinese restaurant is said to be the place to visit to get a feel of the traditional Cantonese “yum char” experience. Maxim’s Palace City Hall is also one of the few remaining places where they still serve dim sum on trolleys that are wheeled around the restaurant. TripAdvisor ranks it as #185 of 9,926 restaurants in Hong Kong.

The queue to get into Maxim’s Palace City Hall, Hong Kong

Maxim’s Palace City Hall does not accept reservations for lunch. Their lunch hours are from 11am to 3pm for lunch. From what we have read, it is always full at lunch time and it is best to arrive before 11 am or after 2 pm to avoid the crowd. We followed the advice and went at 2.15pm. There was still a small waiting crowd but we could tell that the turnover was moving quite fast as the main lunch crowd would be finishing their meal at around this time.

The situation was made manageable by two things. An efficient queue system and an energetic receptionist. There is a machine that dispenses queue numbers. Once that ticket is secured, we asked the receptionist for an estimate time and we walked around the City Hall to kill time. The receptionist was a pleasant young lady that remained calm while multi-tasking – answering telephone calls, providing assistance with the ticket dispenser, explaining the system and crowd management etc.

This is a picture of our ticket. Our wait was about 20 minutes. Because there was a grace period (as long as we do not miss our turn by more than 30 numbers), we did not feel pressured to be there when our number was called.

Here are pictures of the stars of Maxim’s Palace City Hall – the ladies driving the dim sum trolleys. The system was straightforward once we found our table. Just wait for the trolleys to pass by and indicate our interest. The food items are shown in front of each trolley in both Chinese and English. A few trolleys even have a video screen showing pictures of the food. It is quite user-friendly. The food items are recorded on a card that is placed on each table.

The Food

Maxim’s Palace City Hall turned out to be what many people had described in various blogs and reviews. It was a massive hall, the size of a hotel ballroom. The large chandeliers and the seaview of one side gave it a luxurious feel. All the tables were taken up. There was a mix of locals and tourists. Other than dim sum, Maxim’s Palace City Hall also has a comprehensive food menu. Here is a picture of a page from the menu. We were there solely for the dim sum trolley experience and limited ourselves to picking items from the passing trolleys.

We had a few typical dim sum items – char siew bao, siew mai, Teochew dumplings etc. They cost around HK$38 to HK$52 for each basket. We thought that the quality of the dim sum was quite average. The most unusual item and the best item was the bean curd which was scooped out of a big pot.

Our simple dim sum lunch at Maxim’s Palace City Hall Hong Kong was certainly an interesting experience. We agree with the reviews indicating that the main attraction of the Maxim lunch is the experience rather than the quality of food.

Maxim’s Palace
2/F, Low Block, City Hall
Central, Hong Kong

Opening Hours:
11:00am-3:00pm, 5:30pm-11:30pm (Mon-Sat)
9:00am-3:00pm, 5:30pm-11:30pm (Sun/PH)

Website

The Ordinary Patrons | Real Dining Experience of Ordinary People
an independent Singapore food blog

点心 (trad. 點心) diǎn xin (Cantonese. dim sum)
According to a legend, “dian xi” originated with the famous lady general Liang Hongyu. After a long and bloody battle, she ordered many cakes made for soldiers at the frontline to show “dian dian xin yi (a little appreciation).

Origins Of Chinese Food Culture – by Fu Chunjiang