The usual yum cha narrative goes something like this. You wake on a Sunday morning feeling shabby, perhaps unaccountably, possibly for sins well remembered. Dumplings call and fried calamari and, if you've grown up with them, chicken's feet, too.

Before too long, you're sitting at a lazy susan, watching trolleys navigate a crowded dining room like PacMen. You point, shovel, chow, wipe, grin, chaw. And then later, a greasy slump, because cheap dumplings are made with cheap produce and plenty of filler.

There's a new story. Restaurateur Andrew McConnell, longtime lover of Canton, has launched yum cha at Ricky & Pinky, the Chinese dining room at his Builders Arms hotel. It's homage to a classic mode of dining but also an upturning: populist fodder is turned into a produce showcase. There's clean-tasting and conscience-scrubbing free-range pork, plump prawn and glistening crab, the real stuff, not spongy crab-like extender.

The dining room plays it contemporary retro, picked out in greens and gold, infused with a wry nostalgia. It's carpeted, comfortable and laminex-free and food arrives by foot, not wheel. There's tea, of course, but also natty cocktails and wine. It's on the money – and it's easy to understand why you're spending more of it.

Chef ArChan Chan is a Hong Kong girl and a yum cha obsessive from way back. She's resurrected forgotten favourites (fun guo won tons are normally steamed but they're fried here), tweaked standards (Peking duck in a spring roll!) and prettied up some classics.

Chan recruited an experienced dumpling master – known to all as Mr Kong – for his wisdom and nimble fingers. When they discuss yum cha intricacies in Cantonese the local chefs think they're arguing. They're not, though if anything is worth fighting about, it's dumplings.

Start with the prawn toast: sweet prawn mousse tickled with garlic and ginger spread over white bread triangles, sprinkled with sesame seeds, fried and seasoned with lemon juice to serve. It's three-cornered heaven.

The pork and prawn siu mai dumplings include braised back fat and local shiitake mushrooms for extra flavour and body.

Rice noodles (cheong fun) are laboriously made to order: silky, slippery sheets are rolled with mushrooms or pork or doughnuts. They're a yum cha standard but there's extra attention given to toppings and saucing.

There are deviations from the canon, notably in the lack of offal (tripe snuck in but this is Gertrude Street, after all) and in dishes from regional China.

The Sichuan-style lamb shoulder, redolent of cumin and Sichuan pepper, is braised to melting then fried and served with springy white bao. The flavours aren't yum cha but the feeling is: the sharing, the mess, the joy.

I need to tell you about the fried rice because every grain glistens brightly in my memory. Short-grain Japanese rice is used instead of the traditional long grain: the quality is high but so is the hassle factor because the stumpy rice is starchy. It needs to be cooked just right then separated by hand, ever so gently, before stir-frying.

Spring onion and braised mushrooms stud the rice and preserved egg yolk is grated over it but the real flavour is that of the wok, licking over the metal, infusing the rice with energy and fire. It's one of those simple, perfect things that brings tears to the eyes.

To finish, there are fragrant lychees, oversized fortune cookies and sweet pastries but – best of all – no greasy slump.

Rating: Four stars (out of five)