Posts Tagged “dim sum”

Intrepid museum buddy L (who has a shiny new Marketing Analytics blog!) joined me for brunch today in Chinatown and then we popped in at the new Hudson Street Gallery. We visited local favorite China Pearl, arriving just before the 11:00 rush to the among the first seated upstairs. We had a sampling of usual favorites, notably shrimp and vegetable dumplings, and a couple of not so usual dishes, such as the crab claw:

How do you eat these, asked L. To be honest, I’ve never been really sure of the “correct” method, but I do it by holding them by the claw and eating the fried noodle-encrusted crabmeat like a seafood popsicle. I consider myself pretty handy with chopsticks, but the crab claw is beyond my capabilities.

Almost sated, we were looking around for one last morsel when I spied across the room a cart with one of my favorite dim sum items, but one whose name I did not know. It’s a dish of shanghai-style fried breat wrapped with rice noodles and sprinkled with green onions and soy sauce.

The limeduck crack research team has since determined that the name of this dish is Jia Luong or perhaps Zha Liang. Whatever you call it, it’s delicious. It’s a combination of very different textures and flavors, but the net effect is wonderful. After brunch, we picked up some Vietnamese iced coffee (chicory coffee with condensed milk!) and headed over to the Hudson Street Gallery.

I blogged about the Hudson Street Gallery last weekend at the August Moon Festival. Today it was much quieter so we were able to spend some more time with the work. HSG is gearing up for its actual grand opening on September 6 during the Asian Community Development Corporation’s Hudson Street Stories project. It’s an interesting story very similar to the better-known bulldozing of the West End to make way for Government Center. I hope you can all check it out sometime.

Starting to fall behind on SF posts, sorry about that. I asked the concierge at the Hyatt where I could find the best dim sum. She swiftly disparaged all of Chinatown with some references to mystery meat and suggested Yank Sing in the Rincon Center. Dim sum in a food court? I’m not sure if I’m ready to sign up for that. On the other hand, Zagat rates the place tops for dim sum, too. During a meander South of Market, I stumbled into the Rincon Center (a refurbished art deco post office with a Rivera-esque mural!) anyway. The place looked right. I came back the next day with Professor N.

Yank Sing spells it “deem sum” which suggests a certain history and pedigree - they’ve been serving it up since before the orthography settled down. They consider Shanghai soup dumplings a specialty, so we had a batch of those. Also, some shrimp dumplings, my old fave turnip cakes and some interesting veggie items with spinach and peapod stems.

Clockwise from top above: Shanghai soup dumplings (xiao long bao), snap peas, basil dumplings, turnip cake (lobag gao), and shrimp dunmplings (ha gow). If you haven’t had the soup dumplings, you should try them, perhaps at Joe’s Shanghai in NY. They somehow make a dumpling containing both meat and soup. You eat them carefully (since they’re usually piping hot) with both chopsticks and a spoon. Ha gow and lobuk gao are standys, both executed well but not stunningly. The basil dumplings were refreshingly different.

From the veggie cart, we sampled (clockwise from top) savory vegetable dumplings, spinach dumplings and peapod stem dumplings. The colorful savory had a touch of curry in it, or maybe it was just that they were orange. Spinach and peapod stems were fresh and flavorful. The peapod stems have something in common with fresh grass clippings, but in a good way. Oolong tea in a nice glass no drip pot was a great addition.

Having great Chinese food is always a treat, but having it in such a location was just another reminder that the touristy Chinatowns aren’t always what they used to be. Or at least its not so easy for random outsiders to find the gems.

I’ve written about the odd similarity and familiarity of Chinatowns I’ve been to around the world before and it came together again in San Francisco’s Chinatown when I walked past a kosher deli just inside the gate, saw designer fakes openly for sale, and sat on a bus that was stopped to make way for a random passing lion dance. It looks like the same lacquered ducks hang obscenely in shop windows around the world.

Chinatown is a classic immigrant neighborhood. Most of the original immigrants who could afford to have moved away, possibly creating newer, nicer, Chinatowns in their suburbs even while they visit the city center for weekend shopping. And new immigrants from other places have made themselves at home in the old downtown Chinatowns.

Boston’s Chinatown has an additional layer of history on it - it’s one of the oldest, and its been carved up by highways and other urban renewal projects even while it remains a lively patch squeezed in between other old Boston neighborhoods.

For all these reasons, I’m very glad that this weekend, my good friend C will be opening a temporary art space right in Boston’s Chinatown. It will be interesting to see how the mix of contemporary photography and Chinatown history goes down as masses of locals and tourists turn out for the August Moon Festival on Sunday. Read more about the Hudson Street Gallery on facebook, upcoming or going. I hope you can make it to the open house. There will be a grand opening later on.

A while ago, I blogged about a comment I heard at a Photographic Resource Center lecture. Either Max Becher or Andrea Robbins said, “In order not to go blind, you have to travel.” Oddly enough, that post got picked up by Radio Barachois, which might or might not be a radio station in St. Pierre & Miquelon. Go figure.

But I digress. My point is that I did travel recently, to London. While there, I ate Chinese food, Cantonese style dim sum at New World in London’s Chinatown, to be specific. I felt more at home during that meal than I had all week. Perhaps it was the charming company, perhaps because the dining was more unhurried than most of my week, perhaps because the decor was nearly identical to that of big dim sum houses all around the world. The cool thing about diaspora is that if you’re comfortable there, you can find a bit of home almost anywhere. Even if its not your diaspora. Robbins & Becher, right again.

It reminded me that I hadn’t had dim sum at home nearly often enough. So this weekend, I was one of eight adults and three toddlers who descended upon Empire (or perhaps Emperor) Garden and utterly laid waste to everything that came within reach for $12 per adult.

I think it’s safe to say that a grand time was had by all. Spilled tea, clashing dietary restrictions, screaming children. Hot and noisy (热闹), just how life should be.

This might be the beginning of a new post-thanksgiving tradition. On this year’s black Friday, I met N for dim sum at Dim Sum Go Go near City Hall. DSGG has a funky mod color scheme, cartless service and quality generally a cut above that on offer at the giant hot & loud dim sum emporia I usually go for.

Full of thankful excess, we kept it light with pea pod stem dumplings, the enigmatically named “green dumplings”, steamed shrimp and duck dumplings. But one item in the fried column called out to me.  As you may recall, I have a thing for fried turnip cake, but given the season, it seemed a good idea to try #6, “Fried Pumkin Cakes”

I can’t say they were anywhere as amazing as good turnip cake can be, but they were sweet and satisfying.  I wouldn’t be entirely shocked to find that the chef had dumped a can of pumpkin pie filling onto the griddle, with just the barest dash of salt, but there was still something homey and appealing about them, reminiscent of that delicious afghan pumpkin preparation, kaddo.

I first discovered kaddo at Helmand, in Cambridge, where it comes vegetarian as a slab of candied pumpkin, or with a delicious meat sauce on top.  When dining with vegetarian friends, I often scheme to get the meaty version so I don’t have to share.  If you want to attempt making your own, here’s a recipe from a site with a name too good not to link to: kaddo at Habeas Brulee.

It’s about something squarer, greasier, more desirable and more affordable. If you want iPhone news, read it from someone who cares.

I’m talking about 蘿蔔糕 or lobag gow or luobo ga-o or lo baak gou or just plain glorious twice fried turnip cake.

That’s right folks, I’m talking about Turnip Cake. Right here in East Ocean City. It’s good with tea and it rhymes with

Wait, that’s not what I meant. I meant, I’ve enjoyed this dish for years at all sorts of dim sum houses in Boston and New York and here and there. But I had some in Hong Kong and it knocked my socks off. So much so, I’m going to include the photo a second time.

You see, turnip cake is mostly turnip, with some scallions and bits of chinese sausage or dried shrimp, fried up then steamed then fried again and served with some sauce. Like a potato latke in many ways, greasy and celebratory and filling. The ones I get in the USA are usually about the size and shape of a pack of post-it notes, 3 inches square or so, and frequently underdone in the middle. The better places fry them right on the cart, but they sometimes hurry and undercook them.

In Hong Kong, at a random and nameless place in a mall in Causeway Bay, they take the humble turnip cake seriously. It’s served in small cubes to maximize the crispy fried surface area, tossed together in a nest of taro or something. They’re light on sausage and not very greasy. And there’s a hint of chile heat in there somewhere, making sauce an afterthought. Just amazing. Crispy, starchy, aromatic, and cheap.

Stick a candle in there and call it birthday turnip cake. It’s that good. Go get some this weekend.