Ipoh Old Town has its fair share of options when it comes to dim sum and Chang Keong Dim Sum Restaurant is one of them.
This inconspicuous dim sum restaurant is a long a main road and beside a corner lot kopitiam.
What are their specialties here (if any) and what can you expect when you dine here?
Food
Starting with the food at Chang Keong Dim Sum Restaurant, the staff put most of their selection at the front of the restaurant.
There are egg tarts, steamed paus, deep fried and steamed dim sum. As well as a few yong tau fu.
You can order chee cheong fun here too, but we don’t think it looks very good, since the noodles seem to be prepared in advance.
We tried an assortment of steamed and deep-fried dim sum. Our collective favorites were the wu kok, har guen and salted egg yolk and lotus paste steamed buns.
The char siew steamed buns are good too.
But the steamed dim sum like siew mai and har gao were just alright. We feel the same way about the chili and mushroom yong tau fu. The siew mai, could have used a higher meat-to-flour ratio but it tasted nice.
What we did not manage to finish was the fried raddish cake (lo bak go) – it was way too salty and not that crispy.
One of the things that we really like about Chang Keong Dim Sum Restaurant is that you can order your drinks (and food) from next door – the coffee is very good. And barley water is nice as well though pricier than your average kopitiam.
Ambiance
Chang Keong Dim Sum Restaurant has an air-conditioned dining area with multiple ceiling vans. It’s in an enclosed space after the food display at the front.
But you won’t come out smelling like cooking odors which is a plus.
The interior is charming with some vintage décor and furniture. There’s a little fish tank with colorful occupants at the back of the restaurant.
At 8:45am on a Sunday, it was not that noisy either since most of the tourists are over at more famous dim sum restaurants like Ming Court Hong Kong.
Service
Staff at Chang Keong Dim Sum Restaurant consist mostly of local and foreign guys. They are all polite and have good communication with customers.
Especially the guys heading the food counter. We also saw one waiter help a group to take photos inside the restaurant before they even made any orders.
If you order food from the front, it comes quickly (within 15 minutes) and still warm too.
Pricing
We find the pricing for Chang Keong Dim Sum Restaurant reasonable since we ordered many plates of prawn dim sum. The prawns are quite sizeable, but each plate only has 3 pieces of dim sum.
Each plate averaged RM5 when we ordered 17 plates of dim sum and a drink for everyone in our group of 4. Our total was almost RM100.
Coffee and barley both cost RM2.90 here.
Parking
Go before 9am for the best chance to find parking close to at Chang Keong Dim Sum Restaurant.
We recommend having a look at the parking lots close to Back to Begin Café and walking to Chang Keong Dim Sum Restaurant from there.
Conclusion
Chang Keong Dim Sum Restaurant is not the best dim sum restaurant we have ever tried in Ipoh, but we did like the service and ambiance here.
Finding dim sum for breakfast in Ipoh in general, especially on weekends, means you must wait a long time at popular dim sum restaurants.
Or plan to come earlier than most (before 9am).
