No, your eyes don’t deceive you, and yes I’ve got something good to say about Chinese food in L.A. Chinatown, for the first time since 1999 when I last commented about ABC Seafood before the founding owner/chef retired. Thanks to a tipster I was pointed to Golden Dragon’s fantastic pineapple top baked chicken bun, one of my favorite dim sum concoctions, though not too widely seen. Actually, the only place I can think of off the top of my head that currently carries this item is Capital Seafood. However there have been good versions of this item in the past, most recently Lunasia. And as you can see, Golden Dragon’s buns are bigger than the typical dim sum restaurant baked bao. A couple of caveats need to be made, though. These buns may be subject to limited availability, as they circulate separately on trays, rather than the dim sum carts. And the rest of the dim sum I had at Golden Dragon is fairly pedestrian, with the exception of the baked bbq pork bun (also carried on trays) and the snow pea leaf dumpling which were pretty good.
That having been said, these days Golden Dragon may have the best dim sum in LA Chinatown, albeit that just gets them to “tallest midget in the circus” status, notwithstanding Fox News’ rating of Ocean Seafood as one of the top five dim sum restaurants in the United States! (Ordinarily I would have asked what they were smoking when they put their list together, but nothing about Fox News surprises me any more.) And at least I might be inclined to step foot into Golden Dragon once in a while.
