Asian in a Strange Land

Sofia-approved

As planned, we met up with a couple friends of ours, Scott and Rebecca, for the first day of dim sum at the new phoenix-rising-out-of-the-ashes Ding How at their new location on Old Canton near Lake Harbor.  Rebecca invited a friend of hers, Stephen (Steven?), which made it 6 of us getting together on this momentous occasion.

I took the liberty of ordering for us since we had 3 dim sum neophytes with us.  Note that not all pictures are indicative of actual quantity of each item ordered, as I didn’t hold up the show to take pictures before people could dig in.  For (reasonably) accurate counts of each item type, refer to the dim sum menu.  Here’s what we had:

"Sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaf with chicken and mushroom"

We made the newb-ish mistake of ripping open the lotus leaf wrapper instead of the more efficient, cleaner, and no doubt proper method of flipping it over and just unwrapping it.  The rice was very flavorful, although we agreed it could’ve used more chicken and/or mushroom.  One of the best tasting items for me.

"Steamed stuffed dumpling with seafood and vegetable" (Siu Mai)

Or “Shiu Mai”.  Or “Shio Mai”.  Or any number of other spellings.  The Shiu Mai was a hit.  We ended up ordering a 2nd round of 2 more portions of it since it was a universal crowd-pleaser.  Just like the ones we had in D.C. though, they don’t hold a candle to my mom’s rendition, and just as in that scenario it’s an unfair fight.  Even Denise agrees that mom’s Shiu Mai is head and shoulders above all others we’ve ever had.  Not that these were bad by any stretch, but it’s hard to be excited about the foothills when you’ve scaled the peak of perfection.

"Steamed pork ribs with black bean sauce"

No long slats, so obviously these were short ribs.  Ribs were a bit fatty but delicious.  Black bean sauce was conservatively applied and provided a nice flavor kick.  Some flavors are unique to certain cuisines.  I’m pretty sure black bean sauce is a Chinese food flavor.  Worth a try at least once unless you’re squeamish about some rib fat.

"Deep fried golden milk bun, crunch and lightly sweet"

These tasted kind of like doughnuts.  I think Rebecca called them “salty doughnuts”.  That sounds gross, but we liked them despite the somewhat off-putting description.  Didn’t try the dipping sauce though.  I threw these in as a change-of-pace item–a lighter dish than most others we had.

"Steamed rice cake made with daikon radish and tai wan sausage"

Better known as “Turnip Cakes”.  I had never had any, so I ordered us 1 portion.  Not crazy about it myself.  I might try it again elsewhere, but for me this is a “skip”.

"Stir fried seasonal greens with oyster sauce"

Gotta have some vegetables, so these were it.  Very plain without the oyster sauce–I don’t think they season the greens much if at all–but great with a dab of sauce mixed in.  Oyster sauce is a sweet and salty sauce with consistency similar to sweet soy sauce.  Simple dish but good.

"Steamed fresh prawn dumpling with bamboo shot (sic)" (Ha-gau)

Or “Har Gow”.  Often thought of as the dish to judge the whole menu by, which didn’t apply for us per se since we’d already had a number of other dishes that were good.  Some places use whole shrimp in theirs, while Ding How’s has a blended seafood filling instead.  I liked these more than the Siu Mai.

"Pan fried dumpling stuffed with pork and vegetable"

If you’ve had Gyoza at a Japanese restaurant, this is the Chinese equivalent.  Well, the Chinese invented everything, so that should be the other way around, but you get the idea.  The sear on the other side that I didn’t photograph adds a nice slightly crispy/chewy texture to the dumpling.  Comes with some dipping sauce I could’ve used earlier for the Har Gow.

"Steamed rice noodle sheets filled with shrimp"

I forgot to put this on the original order, but when our waiter came back to inform us that a certain item wasn’t available I had the chance to set it right.  They use whole shrimp in these as you can see from the faint pink outlines suggesting shrimp goodness underneath the rice noodle wrapper.  I’ve never seen this served with sauce on the side–always already doused with it–but for diners watching their sodium intake it’s a welcome approach.  Their version is a bit simpler than others I’ve had.  Usually there’s some green onion and such in there too, while theirs is just filled with a couple shrimp I think.  Regardless, this was still one of the highlights for me.

"Steamed buns with sweet red bean paste" (dao sha bao)

“Bao” dough is on the plain side with very mild sweetness to it.  The red bean paste adds most of the sweetness.  Bao is a fun finger food, and we often had these for breakfast while growing up.  It’s like eating toast and jam.  The first photo with Sofia is of her eating one of these buns.  You can barely see the red bean paste on the fringes.  More black than red really.  And the bao are a bit small–”mini bao” if you will.

We also ordered Char Siu Bao, which are steamed buns filled with twice cooked pork instead of red bean paste, which was very disappointingly unavailable this time around.  Bao ranks high on my personal list of comfort foods, and the barbecue pork version is definitely my favorite, so we’ll be trying to order it again next time.

Not pictured but also ordered: “Deep fried sesames (sic) ball made with sweet rice and sweet red bean”.  Not pictured because I was too busy eating and lost track of what I had taken photos of.  As always, I’m a terrible food blogger.  “Man’s gotta eat.”  I should have that tattooed on me somewhere.  For reference on what these sesame balls look like, refer to the D.C. dim sum post.  These were practically the same as the sesame balls we had there except smaller.  These are Denise’s favorite, so next time we’ll be ordering them again.  I like them too, but I’m more of a meat and seafood guy.

So that’s what we had.  In all we plowed through 22 portions, only leaving behind a bit of greens at the end.  Service was slightly scatter-brained and hectic, but that can be excused for the 1st day.  The manager asked us how the food was and apologized for the service, which really wasn’t bad–just a bit clumsy maybe.  I’ve had worse service and would endure much worse to be able to enjoy dim sum again in Jackson (Ridgeland technically, but it’s all Jackson Metro to me).

The manager also mentioned that she’ll most likely swap to the cart method where they cook various dim sum dishes and just cart it around.  I’m kind of conflicted about that.  I didn’t mind our service at all, and would prefer to get what I want by ordering it and having it made to order instead of pointing out an item that has potentially been riding in the cart for a while and isn’t piping hot anymore.  Plus I don’t know that they have the volume to have a big variety of dishes on the carts and be able to sell through enough of them for the system to work.  We’ll see.

My only beef with the dim sum was that some of the portions were smaller than I expected.  In particular the ribs, bao, sesame balls, and turnip cakes felt a bit on the skimpy side.  And the number of items in a portion didn’t always match what was on the menu, although to be fair it was sometimes more and sometimes less.  In other words, it wasn’t malice or false advertising but rather just some disorganization.  In all though, we were most definitely not underfed, and at $67 total before tip including some tea it was very reasonably filling.  5 adults and 1 3-year-old ate till they almost burst–can’t complain about that for $67.

Regardless of some slight service hiccups and misgivings about some portion sizes, I consider this dim sum outing an unqualified success and look forward to going back soon.