Dim Sum at Golden Sea City 金城

Mom and I haven’t been to dim sum for quite a while since our schedules haven’t been matching up quite as nicely lately.

So when a chance finally came we went to one of her favorite places: Golden Sea City.

Golden Sea City and its predecessor were favorites of ours.   They are cheap, and they’re probably one of the only dim sum restaurants left that still does the carts.  It’s kind of sad that this tradition is giving way to checklists and efficiency haha.  The carts are likely the reason we keep coming back.

This is also a place that offers mostly traditional dim sum stuff, such as the above.  Nowadays dim sum restaurants serve so much new-age stuff that to quote my aunt, “It’s not dim sum anymore!!”.

An example was when we went to Red Star, we didn’t order any shao mai (steamed pork dumplings with the yellow skin), ha gao (steamed shrimp dumpling) or san jok ao yok (steamed beef balls with bean curd), which are the epitome of dim sum.  My aunt goes on to say, “It doesn’t even feel like we are having dum sum!”

By the way, the chicken feet were delicious.  They were well-done in that the skin comes off the bones very easily, and the knuckles are easily bitten off.

Here’s the Pan-fried shrimp dumplings with chives.  It was a bit on the lukewarm side, which is inevitable with the cart system.  However there were a lot of big pieces of shrimp in it and it was also very fragrant of chives.  So nonetheless it was still very good.

Shanghai River 滬江

When it comes to Shanghai food, it can range from quite economical to quite expensive. Shanghai River is supposed to fall onto the latter.  But it didn’t seem to deter people from going there.  There was a small group waiting for seats as we got in.  Because Wendy and I are the rare ‘couple’ to go to this restaurant, we got a seat quite quickly.

You can see the group of people huddled inside the glass door waiting for seats.

Quite a busy Wednesday night!!!  We’d thought it would be semi-quiet, but we were wrong!

The staple to all our Shanghainese dinners.  The “soupy” pork dumpling (Shao Long Bao – pinyin).  So delicious!

Red Star Seafood Restaurant 鴻星

I’ve had these pictures for quite a while…probably a month or more. For that amount of time, it’s a miracle that Red Star is still operating.

Anyways, this is another dim sum post. As the visit was quite some time ago, I’ve since went again and so there will be pictures from both visits.

Both visit we ordered this.  It’s blanched geoduck with another similar food item.  I have no idea what the English name of that other thing is but in Chinese it’s 桂花蚌.  I’m pondering whether or not to tell you exactly what that is…

But being a food blog, I will.  It’s the stomach of the sea cucumber.   Yes, we Chinese do eat some weird stuff…

But it was so good.  The geoduck was fresh and sweet, and crunchy.  The chili soy sauce for dipping added a great flavoring to it also.  The 桂花蚌 was excellent also.  Crunchy.  This dish is a bargain at $10.95.  My mom loves it.

Next was another staple in our dim sum outings – Steamed Fish Maw with Shrimp Paste.  I love this stuff, so does Mom.  Most places prepare this either this way or steamed with chicken.  The fish maw was great.  Some places are able to soak it enough in preparation so that it’s actually all fluffy.  But most of the time it is gooey.  I like it both ways.

So what is fish maw exactly?  It’s actually the gas bladder (no not that type of gas…) of certain types of fish.  Quite similar to the swim bladder for buoyancy I suppose.

Again, we Chinese eat almost any part of anything.  ALMOST.

The Deep-fried Shrimp Dumpling with consomme is offered at most places but not all.  Mom really likes this.  She was impressed at how light golden the color of the dumpling is, indicating that either they use fresh oil to fry this or a whole different batch of oil.  Certainly not “thousand-used oil”. Do you know what that term means???

Vivacity 名都

SO like I said before, Vivacity is my mom’s favorite dim sum place. This one Tuesday we were fortunate enough to be able to get a parking space in that hellhole parkade of theirs.

Normally, it shouldn’t be that bad (but honestly, it’s still really bad) cuz there’s supposed to be an attendant that tells you where to park, even when it’s a spot you’re not actually supposed to park in.  But this particular day, the attendant decided to converse (for the longest time) with a young lady that works next door, leaving the 5 or so cars (us included) to fend for ourselves.

But like I said, we were fortunate.

Bad parking aside, this place is pretty good.  The food is good, and the price isn’t too expensive.  They have around 5 lcd screens around the dining room playing underwater footage.  It’s quite enjoyable actually

This is one of those dim sum restaurant where you have a list to check off.  No ladies wheeling stuff around.

Kirin 麒麟 @ New Westminster

It was another weekly dim sum brunch with Mum.  This day she wanted to go to Walmart so we decided to yum cha at Kirin in New Westminster, at Starlight Casino.

I really like the decor of the place.  It’s unlike other Chinese Seafood Restaurants in that it’s not all red with a dragon and a phoenix at the back.  It’s quite modern looking.

Now on to the food!!

After having the Steamed Mushroom Dumpling at The Jade the other day, I was ecstatic to see that it was on the menu here too.

But I was disappointed to see that it wasn’t made using the same type of dumpling skin as the previous.  The skin they use here is similar to the ones used for siu long bao.

Nonetheless, it was good.  There was a lot of filling in the dumpling and it was very flavorful.