Dumplings!

Ohhhh, how I heart dim sum!!

Are you fortunate enough to know what dim sum is? It's delicious, is what it is. Bascially, for the uninitiated, dim sum is a brunchtime treat of little Chinese snackies, dumplings, steamed buns, and fried stuff (fried stuff!) all dipped in your own combination of soy and chili sauce and washed down with unlimited piping hot tea. Impatient and usually incomprehensible (unless of course, you speak Cantonese) Chinese ladies walk carts around with their various offerings and you pick and choose the ones that you want. You can have your table laden with goodies in minutes. You continue to collect trays upon trays of food until you can not eat another bite. It's truly something quite magnificent.

My favorite places for dim sum are in San Francisco. Yank Sing and Ton Kiang. They are a little more expensive than other dim sum places, but said to rival the top places in Hong Kong, where the dim sum is purported to be at it's apex. I'm still eagerly awaiting the opportunity to verify this claim for myself.....

So, yesterday, in an effort to find the most excellent dim sum in the area, four friends and I took a trek out to San Gabriel Valley for some fine feasting. This is the heart of dim sum dining in the greater LA area. Now, I had been to a couple dim sum places in LA before, and been disappointed compared to what I was used to up north. However, in this instance I-wanted-some-damn-dumplings-and-I-wanted-them-now! so I was willing to go in with an open mind. For this weekend's outing, Theo recommended NBC Seafood.

All of the big dim sum compounds are designed in much the same way: with high volume in mind. The places are palatial. We got to the place around 11 am, and pulled a numbered ticket, like waiting in line at a deli. There are mad people there, and predominantly Asian. Young, old, babies, invalids..... all waiting for their moment of glory within the fortress of food. We wait. I think about 40 minutes pass. I am with four dudes, all starving. I mean, I can't lie, I'm pretty famished myself. After minute 20, I think someone in our group goes up to check if our number has been called every 2 minutes. Finally, finally!, we get the signal. Our table is ready.

Let the eating commence! Off to a tearing start, it's an ordering frenzy. Among the treats we sampled: shrimp in rice noodles, pork short ribs with rice, roast duck with plum sauce, fried turnip cake, pork buns, the ubiquitous siu mai dumplings (pork dumplings, pictured right), also-popular har gow (shrimp dumplings, pictured above), shrimp fried in seaweed, and scallop dumplings. The only notable absence for me was the fried taro, one of my all-time favorite dim sum staples, which they informed us they had run out of.

We start slowing down.
No one wants to admit defeat. The rookies drop out first, I think due to their zeal, then Eric Luther Ling and I start to get full, still reaching out for the occasional bite of pork bun or crispy shrimp. However, in the end, the clear winner was Theo, who had enough room to consume a bowl of preserved-egg porridge and still be able to share some mango pudding with me.

So the dim sum in Monterey Park was a resounding success! We all left full to capacity, our happy bellies stuffed with dumpling goodness. And the total cost of this awesomeness? $13 per person, including tax and generous tip. $13! For the amount we ate, that is criminally cheap. So the next Saturday or Sunday morning you are pondering how best to relieve your hangover haze, might I suggest some medicinal tea and a metric ton of Chinese delicacies. Just travel due east on the 10 towards the SGV, or head towards your nearest respective Chinatown equivalent. I promise you will not regret it. Hooray for dumplings!