Mandarin Kitchen DIM SUM

Yay! Felbie and I had DIM SUM this morning-ish. See the secret of going to Dim Sum is arriving shortly after they open (usually around 10am) before they get really busy because most good Dim Sum will have a long wait after noon. Dim Sum is like a Chinese brunch of sorts. If you click the DIM SUM link above you can read more about it. The place we went today was recently renovated and now has a goldfish pond and a bunch of tanks showing their fresh seafood. HUGE lobsters, Giant shrimps (that they serve with the heads on), flat fish (these look creepy), King crab, eel, these are just a few of the tanks that they had. I wish I had thought to bring my camera so I could have taken some pictures of these guys! I tried something new to me also; Jelly Fish! It was so chewy it almost crunched. The first time I put it in my mouth I kind of spit it out right away because the texture was so strange, but then I got my nerve up and tried again and by the end of the meal it had really grown on me and I ate it all. We also tried the duck (which I had never tried before, it had bones in it that were tricky to eat around but whatever it was cooked in was SO good). Aside from that I ate all my usual favorites, taro cakes, taro dumplings, shrimp and shrimp and cilantro steamed dumplings, sweet cream buns, egg tarts, fruit custards, pickled pork slices (this was served on top of the jelly fish), lotus paste filled sesame balls, OH also new to me, we tried crab balls - deep fried balls of crab meat mixture with claw meat in the center and the actual claw sticks out of the side of the fried mass. Here is a picture of many of the things you might find at a typical dim sum meal. Many of the steamed items come in steamer containers like this. And here is another picture of yummy dim sum food. We ordered so much that we ended up taking two buns, two egg tarts, and two fruit custards home with us. We just ate those for tea. Whew! I am STUFFED! :)