Vegetarian Dim Sum House (Chinatown) Review

[jakecola]

OK, so here's the situation. I'm not a vegetarian, I eat like a typical meat-loving CHer (any- and everything). My father-in-law was in town, and he's a vegetarian. We've gone to dim sum with him before (in Seattle) and he usually has to settle for ordering off the regular menu and having the Chinese Broccoli while the rest of his meat-eating family gets to enjoy all the lovely delights of dim sum. So, we decided to try this place out so that he could get the full dim sum experience. I would not recommend this place for anyone, vegetarian or otherwise.

I have absolutely no problem eating vegetarian, provided it is GOOD. I eat vegetarian a lot when I have Indian food, falafel, or some other ethnic cuisines.

We got there around 10:40, they opened at 10:30, but their door was still locked. We waited outside with another 3-top while they milled about inside. Whatever, that's fine. They opened the door and a woman looked at us dubiously and announced in a not-so-welcoming voice "no meat or seafood here!!" Hmmmm, so that's what the word "vegetarian" means in the name of your restaurant...I told her that this was precisely the reason why we had come there!

We sat down, tea was brought promptly. Place was pretty dingy, mustard bottle had a good deal of mustard caked and dried on the outside of the squeeze bottle. This place is all check boxes on a card, no carts, which I have no problem with - it usually means things are being fried/steamed to order which is nice. We checked off a number of choices based on what we had read on Yelp (I know, I know): Treasure Balls, Monk Dumplings, Rice Flour Rolls with Mushrooms and Rice Flour Rolls with Mock Ham, Sticky Rice, Spring Rolls, Buddha's Tofu Rolls, and Lotus Root Cakes.

No one picked up our card for about 10-15 minutes, despite the fact that we were clearly ready. A Chinese man who walked in after us was served his food almost immediately. Again, whatever, I've experienced that before and it doesn't bother me much. It did bother me that we were being ignored. Our card was finally picked up, and about 5-10 minutes later, our food started to arrive.

First out were all the deep fried items, the Treasure Balls, the Lotus Root Cakes, and the Spring Rolls. I wish they hadn't brought out all the fried food at once with no steamed food, would've been nice to have some variety. The Lotus Root cakes were pretty good, some starch (either potato or rice) as filler with chunks of lotus root inside, and the spring rolls were probably my favorite thing of the entire meal - filled with fresh cabbage, mushroom, carrot. Good flavor. The treasure balls were just deep fried potato puree, no flavor, entirely useless except to make you full without any satisfaction.

Next out was everything else. The rice flour rolls were OK, although the mock ham was a little weird, and the mushrooms were also kinda stringy and didn't feel like they were part of the roll (these are the white, slippery long rolls typical at dim sum). The tofu was great, the thin sheets of soft tofu in a flavorful sauce. Monk Dumplings were basically shumai, but had a lot of rice in them as filler - again, no flavor, lots of filling stuff. The Sticky Rice was alright, had small chunks of mock ham. Basic flavor was good, but again, it was just rice - I would've loved some veggies in there. We had to ask for water.

All in all, we left feeling very full (after not eating that much dim sum for 3 people - I've eaten way more regular dim sum and felt less full) without any satisfaction. This was because almost every dish was full of something very starchy as a substitute for meat - either potato puree, or rice. Nothing had any flavor unless it had sauce all over it - if you're going to use that much rice, it needs to have some seasoning on it, some flavor. I found myself dousing EVERYTHING in soy and chili and mustard. Afterwards, we walked around the corner to the White Swan Bakery and bought some BBQ Pork buns for my wife and I, so we could at least say that our trip to Chinatown delivered in some way!

Look - if you're a vegetarian, and you want to have the experience of ordering lots of different dumplings and little goodies that us meat/seafood eating dim sum'ers get to enjoy, then you MIGHT enjoy this place. Might. I give it 2 stars for that alone, and because at least one or two dishes were good. Maybe we ordered the wrong dishes, but to be honest, I would have liked a lot more actual vegetables in my vegetarian dim sum, not so much starchy filler/substitute

[Chandavkl]

Pea shoot dumplings are fantastic. But you're right that their appeal is to a fairly narrow clientele (i.e. non-meat eaters, as opposed to vegetable lovers) and not us Joes off the street.

[mstropicana]

I love Golden Unicorn - they have the best dim sum in chinatown - lots of dishes to choose from - weekends it gets quite crowded but worth the wait.

[jakecola]

Thanks for the rec., I've heard Golden Unicorn is good from a friend who's originally from Hong Kong, but the point is that we wanted to go for Vegetarian Dim Sum. Trust me, if we hadn't had my father-in-law with us, it would have been another story altogether.

[small h]

Next time your father-in-law's in town, consider taking him to Dim Sum Go Go. They have a vegetarian dim sum assortment (10 pieces for $10), as well as the usual suspects for the omnivores at the table. I enjoyed it, although some of the dumplings seem like the same filling in different wrappers. I loved the shrimp rice rolls, also, but I have never met a shrimp rice roll I didn't love.

http://nymag.com/listings/restaurant/...

[foodwhisperer]

vegetarian dim sum house is good. the Turnip cake is good. stick with that one The other places including dim sum gogo, tell you the dishes are vegetable but you will get meat or shrimp even after they say vegetable