I've been around so long that I can remember when tapas were Spanish. Nowadays, you can find Indian and Japanese restaurants that serve tapas. I was offered them in a place that purported to offer the cuisine of Brittany, although there was not a single distinctively Breton dish on the menu.
I don't know why restaurants would betray their own distinguished roots by expropriating the terminology of another cuisine, but perhaps they think it gives them an international cachet.
Slowly, tapas morphed into small plates, which are now routine. Irritatingly, in some places, the waitstaff explain their "shared dining concept" as though announcing that they have discovered a second Turin shroud. So I suppose it was only a matter of time before we were offered yum cha at a place that is not Chinese.
Culprit is that place. In the upstairs space that was home to The Black Hoof, which served tapas (the Spanish kind), Kyle Street and Jordan Macdonald, who were the beating hearts of the kitchens at Depot and Federal Delicatessen respectively, have set up on their own account. They're serving what they call "Yum Cha Our Way" (the capital letters are theirs), which is not their take on pork siu mai, sticky rice and chicken feet but a selection (nine the night we went) of tasty bites, brought to the table, on trays on a trolley. They cost between $3 and $12, and you say "yes" or "no" according to your inclination, leaving room, if you have any sense, for something from the more conventional entree/main/dessert selection on the menu proper.
