• Dim Sum $8.00

Dim sum is my favorite way to eat. I love to try all kinds of things when I go out and what better way to do this then having a bunch of little bites of food brought to your table. It helped that we also had six other people with us Debbie, Charis, Jason, Stuart, Claire and Lindsey. Debbie and I work together and the rest were her friends. (I don't think Steve and I could find a group of six friends between us, so we thank Debbie for bringing hers.) I think it is essential to have a large group of people for dim sum, you get to try so much more.

I am not even going to try to list all the dishes we had. I will say that their pot stickers were good, there was a seaweed roll that was outstanding, we had a shark fin dumpling that was fine, the duck was below average, the turnip cake was much better than I suspected, the greens were good and they have lots of dumplings with the same shrimp mixture in them.

Overall I would say this was a good dim sum experience. There was a good selection (we weren't able to try everything you might need a group of 10 to do that) and it was very affordable. At $8 a person, I don't think you could find a better meal. (It just happened to be $8 a person. They total by the dishes you have. Each dish has a specific price, they mark them on a slip of paper as you get them and then they total up the various numbers and letters to come up with the total. So it is not a flat rate).

I don't feel like it was quite as good as the dim sum I have had in other cities, but it may be only one of two possible dim sum places in the Twin Cities. (If anyone knows of more please let us know.) So with that in mind it is definitely worth a try and it is a great place for a large group brunch on Sunday.

• Dim Sum $8.00

This was my first time having dim sum, so I have no dim sum experiences to compare this against. However, I can compare it to numerous Asian restaurants we have visited over the years. For those who enjoy Chinese food, dim sum is essentially appetizer-sized portions of Chinese food, mostly without sauces you would expect to accompany Szechwan or Hunan style entrees. It’s a wonderful experience, because you order as much as you want until you’re full. The servers push carts full of plates around the restaurant and you choose what you want. Most of the time, I felt gluttonous and Neanderthal-like, pointing at items on the cart we wanted to eat.

Lucky for me, Renee and the other six who joined us on this Sunday had more experience with dim sum. It was cool to sit around the giant lazy susan and let them do the ordering. The staff spoke good English, which helped us know what we were ordering. The staff also cleaned off empty plates expeditiously and kept our water and tea well stocked. The only thing that was somewhat disconcerting was that we did not know the prices for what we ordered. I thought we had eaten about $20 worth of food, but it turned out that we only had to pay $8 per person, including tax and a 15% gratuity.

I was happy with the food, and I could recommend the restaurant, but it’s not quite in the excellent range. I’ll never remember everything we tried, but a few things stand out. We tried the shark fin dumplings, which must have been predominantly pork, because it tasted more like dark turkey meat and the price of shark fins would cost considerably more than what we paid. The sticky rice was a delicious sweet mixture-- don’t miss it if you go. I did not try the duck, though others seemed to enjoy it. The shrimp balls were so-so, because of the so-so shrimp paste they used in the balls and surrounding the crab claws. The pot stickers were standard pot stickers, you can probably get pot stickers that are at least as good at your local Asian restaurant. The turnip cake is much better than it looks or the name implies; it’s another good dish to try here, where’s the price is right and someone else will split it with you. Our companions noted that the egg rolls were nothing special. Several other items were quite good-- it’s just a matter of trying them if they look interesting.

Other items of note: we broke two chopsticks at the table while splitting portions, but that just added to the experience. Also, we did not see chicken’s feet here, though we probably wouldn’t have ordered them. We’ll leave that for another place and time.