Flutterby™! : Mmmm... Tasty 2003-06-18 10:38:37.92539+00

Mmmm... Tasty

2003-06-18 10:38:37.92539+00 by Dan Lyke 10 comments

For lunch today: Not one, but two different types of intestine (cow), and "phoenix claw" (chicken feet). Not sure I need to repeat the experience, but not too bad. The chicken feet were actually kinda tasty, although too fatty for my preferences.

BBQ chicken feet are REALLY tasty. Wang Jue giggled like a schoolgirl when they came by on the Dim Sum cart in Atlanta. My problem was quantity. "Could you bring me a gallon of those please...." The meat/bone ratio is about 1/4.

Hi Dan! Hope China is treating you nice- sounds like it if you are eating intestine, and feet. ;} Any snake consumed yet? :) We Miss Our Neighbors!!! :) have a nice trip!

Topspin: the nice thing about that 1/4 meat/bone ratio is that you have to eat 'em slowly. Although the whole "pop a whole claw in your mouth" thing doesn't work for me, I've gotta pull the fingers off and eat 'em one at a time.

Tyler: Nope, no snake. Maybe I'll see if I can find that tonight, although I'd really like to do dim sum with more of the steamed buns and veggies and less of the stuff that's truly foreign to my experience for my last night here.

I also want to bring home a dim sum card to practice my Chinese from. Over here they don't do the "wheel the carts" around thing, especially not post SARS

, so it's more like ordering sushi.

Over here they don't do the "wheel the carts" around thing, especially not post SARS, so it's more like ordering sushi.

That's the way it's done in my local dim sum place here, too, except for one cart that goes around with the weekend specials and the gruel, er, soup, er, whatever that liquidy stuff is. I find the "point and guess" version of dim sum to be great for occasional adventures, but I do like the "sign the card and we'll bring you these" version for predictable meals.

Actually, after two... interesting... tries today at lunch I finally managed to read the little sign on the front of the cart rather than trying to hear what the woman was hawking and get what I wanted.

Ah Dan, Give me the Dim Sum card, I'll take it to work, and my collegues will translate it, at least good for the next trip. :) bummer on the snake- heard it's yummy and super crispy!!! Weather's been nice in fairfax, see you over the weekend! Oh yeah, Spirit and Serenity miss you guys!

Our local dum sum place has the carts but, although it gets good reviews, neither I nor my friend were impressed. We thought the food was far too fatty and bland. This was my first introduction to dim sum, so I was prepared to just chalk it up to "not my thing". But my friend is more food-worldly and he said it was bad.

Personally, the chicken feet you're describing don't sound very good at all. But then I can't stand chicken wings because of the low meat/bone ratio.

Dan, I wanna see the card. Dim sum is the reason I got interested in Chinese in the first place ... I realize I fell down on the job of providing you with a cheat sheet, but even so. I don't guess you could do something like a high-resolution scan of it?

We go to a couple of places where dim sum is a la carte but not a la cart, if you get my meaning, and I've noticed that as a rule the English menu attempts on those are almost always worse than the ones on a non-dim-sum Chinese menu. This is true even when the restaurant has both a regular menu and a dim sum menu. My theory is it's because dim sum often has poetic or non-literal names - phoenix eyes, "little dragon" buns (soup buns), and so forth. Meanwhile, on the main menu the food is usually very literal - the main ingredient, how it's prepared, and any other key ingredients. "Stirfry diced chicken with bamboo shoots."