On Columbus Day, we were celebrating the end of an epic weekend and were in dire need of some comfort food. Chinatown and dim sum seemed like just the thing. I had read reviews about the Good Mong Kok Bakery, which was supposed to have delicious and cheap dim sum. Well, if you look at the website, it's a little hard to tell what their business hours are. However, I do believe it was established in 1978.
Needless to say, it was closed. Which left us walking around Chinatown looking for a reasonable dim sum place (at 1:30pm on a holiday which was both late and on a questionable day of the week). Chinatown in San Francisco is a very weird place - at times, it seems like you have teleported straight to Hong Kong, and at times it seems like you are at Epcot Center, which puts you in danger of ending up at a bad, Westernized version of a Chinese restaurant while the locals happily slurp steaming delicious bowls of ramen somewhere else. But what an adventure to feel like a tourist in your own city, so we gave it a go and ended up at a dingy but ok-looking dim sum joint.
We loaded up on dumplings, which is just about all that they had anyway - pork, shrimp, vegetable, soup dumplings, and shark. Yes, shark!
They also had the soft and sticky filled noodles that I love, filled with shrimp. We passed on the beef. It was a little sad to only have soy sauce as a condiment, because these noodles are even better when swimming in a savory sauce.
Just in case we didn't have enough starch already, we got an order of fried noodles.
And of course, no dim sum meal would be complete without a sesame ball for dessert. If you have never had one of these, they are as decadent and addicting as a Krispy Kreme doughnut. Bean paste inside, dough outside, fried and coated with sesame seeds. They can be kind of greasy, but they never claimed to be a health food.
It was an ok place, but after having travelled to Hong Kong every year for 10+ years during my career, I got awfully spoiled by being taken to the best dim sum restaurants, and it didn't quite hit the spot. Of course, we kind of went the fast food route, whereas I would rather have dim sum in a sit down place, with some other dishes (like green vegetables) to balance out all of the decadence. After hoovering a fair amount of this food, you can't help but feel a little dirty afterwards, like after polishing off a bucket of chicken by yourself.
Afterwards, we stopped by the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie factory, and had some warm cookies just off of the machines. It's a funny little place in an alley that you would never find unless you knew about it. They're a little cranky and do a little bit of the hard sell (50 cents for a photo!), but the cookies are good and they also make almond cookies which are outstanding and sell for about $4.00 for a big bag.
So, while we had a good time, I am still in search of that authentic dim sum experience that won't break the bank. To be continued, recommendations welcome!
