This What's for Dinner is actually a What's for Lunch, but I'm sure you'll forgive me. After this lunch, all I could manage for dinner was some veggies and cottage cheese!
Dim Sum. The word alone is enough to make my heart skip a beat, so when I learned that NYU was sponsoring a Dim Sum lunch in Chinatown for new grad students living in NYU housing, I'm really mostly just lucky I remained conscious. The experience was great before we even got to sit down and have food. We walked from NYU down to Chinatown, which was a fascinating experience for me, since I haven't spent much time there. I saw the most BEAUTIFUL chinese long beans, I wanted to knock over the bystanders blocking my path and just snatch them up, but unfortunately I was with a group, and that sort of behavior tends to be frowned upon. I decided that the long beans would probably be there another day, but my pride once lost was lost forever. Hey, a girl's got to make friends! I also saw at least 4 varieties of mushroom that I couldn't identify, including some beautiful shiny black ones with wide thin caps and slender stems. I'd like to go back with a camera and figure out what all of them are. All of that to say, I will definitely be returning to Chinatown at some point when I can fight through the crowds without shame.
When we got to the restaurant there was a huge mass of people waiting on the street, and no wonder! Jing Fong (http://www.jingfongny.com/) is a Chinatown institution. We had about a 30-40 minute wait, and just to give you an idea of how popular this place is, the dining room seats 800...and we had to wait 30 minutes. Luckily, grad students are creative, and we decided to get bubble tea while we waited. For those of you who have never had bubble tea, it's a milky, sweet iced tea with giant black pearls of tapioca in it, making for a sweet delicious drink with a chewy after-bite. It's delicious, and another one of my favorite things. I'm almost glad we had the wait since it meant getting bubble tea.
Once we finally got inside, everything happened very quickly. For those of you unfamiliar with dim sum, it is a traditional way of eating, most particularly in Hong Kong. You sit at a table, usually with a group, and waiters with carts roll by and offer you an absolutely blinding assortment of delicacies. Most people know dim sum for dumplings, but there is so much more than that. Within seconds of sitting, our table was filled with steamed pork buns, doughy on the outside and filled with sweet, barbecue pork, several types of dumplings including small shu mai shrimp dumplings wrapped in clear rice wrappings, vegetable shrimp dumplings, and pork dumplings. The most interesting item we were served, however, were the fried taro dumplings. These were deep fried, slightly sweet mashed taro root, covered with wispy threads of fried dough, wrapped around pork, scallions and a sauce fit to make you faint. On top of the incredible dumplings, we had soft-shell crab fried with spicy red pepper, tiny fried whole fish which were salty and delicious, and two different types of barbecue pork. Even the little touches, such as the sweet, crunchy soy beans under the pork, were perfect. All of this was washed down with an endless supply of jasmine tea, and finished off with coconut foam and sesame dumplings filled with sweet bean paste for dessert. The meal was perfect, and giant. I was somewhat concerned that I would need to be rolled home, but I managed to walk. I actually thought that it was possible that I had died, and this was heaven. But, no. This, my friends, was simply Chinatown, although I'm beginning to doubt whether those two things are all that different.
Enjoy your labor day weekend, and if you have a chance, get a group together and grab some dim sum! You won't be sorry!
End Note
While it will be impossible to truly capture what happened yesterday, Jing Fong's website has pictures of some of what we ate here: http://www.jingfongny.com/dimsum/. The taro dumplings, which I think are the hardest to describe, are the third from the left on the top line.
No comments:
Post a Comment