What a cool place. For a girl who loves stories just as much as her tea, she came to the right place. Opening in the early 1930s, Luk Yu Teahouse is not only rich in Chinese history and culture, but has somewhat of a darker side as well.

In November of 2002, a Chinese assassin casually walked into Luk Yu, had his breakfast, paid his bill, walked over to his target, shot him in the head and walked out. Totally B-movie, Hong-Kong-gangster style. If it wasn't unfortunately true, you would think the story had been scripted. Even the setting, the old ceiling fans to the aged wooden molding to the mirrored booths, is right off of the silver screen.

Its infamy aside, Luk Yu is most famous for its tea, dim sum (served from 7:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.) and "indifferent" service, though I somehow missed the last part.

In fact, my waiter was great. Making friends rather quickly over discussions about such things as the perfect tea pot and Chinese dining etiquette, Sham ended up being my partner in crime in smuggling one of the tea pots out of the restaurant. Mind you, I had asked how much it would cost, but he simply shook his head, went back to the kitchen and came back with one of the pots wrapped in brown paper.

Shoving it in my vacant camera bag with his encouraging words of "quick, quick!" and slightly paranoid glances, I casually resumed my meal, quite happy with our stealth. About seven minutes later, Sham reappeared with five brown bags of Bo Lai (tea mentioned in previous entry), and again his, "quick, quick!"

So dessert rolled around and by Sham's recommendation, I ordered the almond cream, pictured above. I've had it before, but not like this. The egg whites were so smooth and each flavor of the soup, from the almonds to the thick cream, was so individually identifiable, but still created a wonderfully elegant combination of tastes. Gastronomic perfection in a bowl.

Slurping the soup and enjoying the last of my tea, Sham came back over with one of the tea cups and its matching saucer.

"Quick, quick!"

At this rate, I thought I was going to acquire the whole darn dining set and was beginning to worry about how much more I was going to be able to fit into my camera bag without looking like Robin Hood and Little John robbing the prince's caravan.

Needless to say, I left Sham a very nice tip for all of his "services" and decided it was about time to go buy some sweet headphones.

And not only did I find my headphones, but thirteen Hitchcock movies for six bucks.


This is what I call a great day.