It’s in Arcadia. Has anyone been for dim sum? My family’s planning to go tomorrow, but I could probably persuade them to go elsewhere, if the food’s bad…
@chandavkl filed a preliminary report on Chowhound.
Personally, I’d probably opt for China Red down the street.
+1 on china red if you’re in arcadia
Alas, apparently family CANNOT be persuaded to try elsewhere. I’ll give a report later today…
Never made it back after they changed their menu/format, so I’m eagerly waiting to hear back. It’s interesting that there have been no real reports on Spring Bamboo lately so your report will be a real public service.
For that matter, has anyone been to China Red since the ownership change (assuming that’s already happened).
This place is… interesting. We had a 12PM reservation and were about 30 min late. The private room was not ready, although it was prepped fairly quickly. Ordering is an odd combination of a “standard” menu (which I didn’t pay much attention to, other than to note that it was quite extensive and included sushi and hot pot) and dim sum (a separate menu).
We ordered har gow, siu mai, chive dumplings, rou mi gee, red bean buns, some deep fried taro item, chicken feet, zha liang, and… geoduck and king crab (?!). There were a couple of other dim sum items ordered I can’t recall. A distinguishing feature of this place is that you can order seafood items that I normally associate w/ dinner at lunch.
The zha liang was genuinely bad. Very narrow (measurement-wise) filling, and the cruller didn’t didn’t taste fresh. The rest of the dim sum (I didn’t have the rou mi gee or the chicken feet) were… serviceable. Not nearly as good as Lunasia/Sea Harbour/Elite… although I think the prices are also lower? (I didn’t pay, so I can’t tell).
The seafood was actually good. The geoduck and crab had a pleasant and subtly sweet flavor. The geoduck was relative tender and the accompanying sauces (one was apparently simply a spicy version of a scallion, soy sauce, and vinegar combo [I think]) was a nice complement. While crab was fine, there wasn’t a super fresh or pristine quality to it. I did appreciate them serving it w/ the shell already cracked. They also took the crab carapace and added steamed egg custard and had (a TON of) glass noodles underneath the crab legs (which was quite delicious).
The restaurant gave egg tarts and two types of fried pastry as complimentary dessert (one pastry had pumpkin, the other had taro; the taro was significantly better, IMHO). I didn’t taste the egg tart, but there appeared to be a curiously “clear” layer (it looked almost watery) above the custard, and the custard didn’t seem very substantial.
The meal was for a family event, so I have no idea how much the cost was. The person who paid, though, felt that the food was a good value.
Despite this being a relatively new place, the interior was pretty tired (and cheap-looking).
Service was very polite and, if it’s important, all waitstaff seemed to speak English very well.
The place wasn’t very crowded; I think there’s a reason for that.
If you’re dying to have both seafood and dim sum, I suppose this place will do. It seemed very meh to me. I’d rather go to one of the better dim sum places and save the seafood for later.
Just about most dim sum places will let you order off the dinner menu, including the live seafood (if they have any), during dim sum service.
But why no sushi? Everyone gets sushi during dim sum …
Thanks for the report.
Will they? Then really no reason to go to this place at all, IMHO, unless cost is a factor and the place is actually less expensive (although you prob get what you pay for)…
Clearly all your dimsum/seafood palaces will let you order off the regular menu at lunch time. The only question is whether you want the crew that’s there during lunch to whip up the non-dim sum items, as it might not be the A team in there.
my understanding was that dim sum & dinner staffs were separate in terms of tasks and skill set.,though that may be more about assembling & prep, what have you; my concern is that the you might not have the same person preparing certain dishes at lunch than you would at dinner and quality might suffer.
When I was a kid (cue the kid joke here), every time our family would go to NBC for dim sum I would always order the shrimp with walnuts, and invariably it would always have scallions in it, which was never the case at dinner time.
well there you go. i must have been formulating my previous response while david was posting his; had i seen it, i probably wouldn’t have bothered.
Yep.