Dim Sum

Saturday midday, J and I headed out for dim sum at Royal China. Royal China is currently my favored dim sum house although I've been reading about a few different houses including:
- Oriental Pearl -- which was recently remodeled and has probably earned another shot, six years since I was last horrified there.
- China Delight -- highly recommended by two co-workers despite this stigma as a Sichuan restaurant by night. Rumored to be on par with SF dim sum

I am happy to say that pretty much everything I had at Royal China was up to snuff including:
- foong zhou (phoenix claws): braised chicken feet
- ha gow: shrimp dumplings
- ha cheong: rice noodles with fresh shrimp

The pai gwut (spare ribs) were a little lacking, but that's to be expected. I have yet to find good spare ribs here in Atlanta.

We didn't see any woo gauk (fried taro dumplings) or, as J calls them, taro rellanos or lau mei gei which is too bad. But we did end the meal with a nice bowl of dofu fa each.

And don't tell my mother, but I also had a bowl of ngau tzap, braised beef tripe. Notoriously high in cholesterol and fat, this is still one of my favorite dim sum dishes.

The most interestingly horrible thing I saw happened at the next table. It was a Causasian couple, and the guy was wearing a tank top with dress slacks. My attention was drawn to them when I noticed the waiter talking to this guy who was holding not the regular plastic square chopsticks of dim sum houses but some enameled chopsticks that he had brought with him. He was commenting to the waiter that his chopsticks were "more sticky." The only commentary from the waiter was "they are so light!" Like one staring at a train wreck, I couldn't look away. I watched as a dish of char siu bau (steamed pork buns) arrived at the table. and he proceeded to dump a three second count of soy sauce all over them!