date: 4/24/07
location: richfield
grade: b

pork, shrimp, and chicken.

if you happen to really enjoy this combo of meat and seafood, ground, the dim sum menu is for you. throw in a bit of tofu, and you've got most of it down. you can get these fried, steamed, in buns, in wontons, out of wontons, with bean paste, with tofu, without tofu, with spices, without spices, and so and and so on and so on.

our servergave us a tour of the items. you get a dim sum menu with pictures, and another dim sum menu with prices. (it would be nice to combine the two, but hey, can't have everything, where would you put it, as steven wright says). there's more choices on the menu than what they have... they run out, not everything is made every day. maybe we were there on p,s and c night. who knows. but the range of selection was a tad disappointing.

a few people at our table went for this. they got a few platefuls of things, which ranged from very tasty (and surprisingly most likely pork, shrimp and chicken-free) egg custard tart (it may have had tofu, however). it's like flan, only different. the pork and peanut dumplings were a lot more peanutty than expected. oddly, you only got soy and some hot sauce at the table, i would've expected a few more choices.

anyway, some of the... sum (sorry) were just more on the 'interesting' side. but hey, it's different, adventurous, and how often do you get offered chicken feet (cold or hot, your choice)? if you're a vegetarian, or don't eat pork, you can get a few things with tofu or quite a few dessert options, but your main dim sum selection is limited, so probably not a good idea to go that way.

i did think, however, my life is a deep fried bitter melon ball.

or if you're not feeling adventurous and want something you're more familiar with.... you can hit the chinese-american menu. they have the classics... lo mein, egg foo young, chow mein, etc.. someone got a combo with a few of the things (i think it was cashew chicken, kung pao chicken and fried rice, but i could be wrong) from this menu, and it was pretty good when hot, but as soon as it got cold (which was pretty quick), it was not that good. a bit gummy and such.

since i was in no mood to make a bunch of dim sum choices (and again, bloody difficult to do if you don't eat pork), and i figured i can get the stuff on the chinese american menu at pretty much every chinese restaurant, i went to the third (and not technically final, as there's at least a wine list and possibly others out there) menu, the cantonese one.

they have more authentic chinese dishes on this menu, including fish soup, tongue with garlic, sour pickled vegetables with intestines, and fried rice and noodle dishes. i was in the mood for a noodle dish (well, i was in the mood for mac and cheese, but it's not on any menu here, and if it was i wouldn't order it here), and i figured (bad pun alert) i could use a bit of fun on my life, so i got the seafood chow fun (dry).

dry does not mean no sauce, it's more of a cooking method, like sauteeing. if you get the stuff with sauce, the dish swells with sauce, apparently, and of course it tastes different. the chow fun noodle is an wide egg noodle. the other noodle dish i was eyeing was e-fu, which is more of a hollow spaghetti-type of noodle.

the chow fun turns out to be kind of like lo mein, but with different noodles. the seafood part was some overcooked squid (not sure if that was on purpose or not, but it was rubbery), scallops and shrimp. a decent amount of the seafood, though not tons. it was an interesting dish, nice and mellow, comfort food (except the squid). not bad.

it's a good place to go when you have a group of people who are going out that run the gamut from not wanting to eat things they've not eaten before to more adventurous diners. there's not a lot of places that can do that. they had no problems splitting the billing, so it would be good for larger groups, even.

the service at the place was odd. after getting our food delivered to the table in record time, the food ordering was ignored for ages. when an order of spring rolls was placed, i'm not sure if it got to the kitchen until we inquired about it, as it took a bit too long. but water was filled at a good pace. so.

as for atmosphere.... it's kind of odd. yes, probably the biggest restaurant in minnesota has some decorating challanges that still exist about a year after they opened, and i would say if they just get the amount of people they had last night, i am not sure how they keep that place open.... weddings and receptions? or maybe there were a lot of people, and the amount seemed tiny in the big large mc huge space.

the room we were in featured a large screen in front of a dance floor running the videos and possibly music for karaoke, but it wasn't time for that. the walls had a large chinese art piece, but also the world's largest lite beer mirrored poster. there was a japanese-style ceramic cat. there was a pile of cereal boxes in the corner (dim sum breakfast, perhaps... pork, shrimp, and chicken wrapped in crushed cinnamon toast crunch bits, deep fried and in milk). but generally, there was a lot of blank space there.

not sure how the other rooms looked, and after someone made the trip, we were warned off the restrooms.