Dim sum is one of my absolute favorite types of meal but I usually stick to Golden Unicorn or in the past Oriental Garden. So when my mom was in town, I thought I'd try a different place just to spice things up. I had read about Nom Wah Tea Parlor in lots of blogs and articles as one of the oldest "parlors" (whatever that means) in NYC. The location is in this tiny random street in Chinatown that I honestly have never been down ever in my 12 years of living in NYC. My mom and I got there at noon, which for any dim sum place is a bad idea because that is right at peak hour. We were told it was a 30 minute wait, which really wasn't that bad at all.
When we were finally seated, I noticed that unlike most of the other dim sum places I go to, at this place my mom and I were actually one of the few Asians in the whole place. Everyone else there was (for lack of a better word here) white. That usually says to me that the place isn't very authentic or good but I was willing to keep an open mind here. The decor here was also very un-Chinese in that it looked mostly like a old school diner and there were no pushcarts available. I know some people hate that but honestly in NYC, there are very few places that are big enough to have pushcarts, so that really didn't bother me that much. So instead of the typical pointing and screaming you do at a place like Golden Unicorn, you are given a list and you select which dim sum dishes you want and they then bring it to you table. To me what is great about this concept is that usually the food will be made fresh to order and be pipping hot. My general gripe with pushcarts is that sometimes you get the same cart over and over again and the food is cold and old and you could be waiting forever to finally see the cart you want. Here everything that came out tasted like it was just made and steamed right before being served. I will say here that the menu is a bit more limited than a typical dim sum place but it has the "greatest hits" of shumai, har gow, rice rolls, various dumplings and even chicken feet. We went a bit overboard in the ordering and I would recommend that for 2 people you can get away with 6 dishes instead of the 8 we got. We ordered the har gow ($3.75), shrimp shumai ($3.95), pork shumai ($3.50), shrimp and snow pea leaf dumpling ($3.95), shrimp rice roll ($3.50), fried crab claw ($3.50), turnip cake ($3.50) and the fried shrimp wrapped in bean curd ($3.95). Like I said before, everything was very hot and fresh. I made me realize how often I put up with cold dim sum! I thought the shrimp and pea leaf dumpling was pretty unique and not a typical dumpling you see in most places. The biggest disappointment was the fried crab claw (which is really a shrimp ball fried around a crab claw) not because of the taste but because there was only 1 of them for $3.50. Usually you get two to a dish.
Overall, I really enjoyed every dish we got and was surprised at how much I liked it over my other dim sum experiences. But I do think if you're looking for the "true" dim sum experience you do still need to go to Golden Unicorn at least once so that you can experience the pushcarts and the madness of old Chinese woman screaming at you and putting dishes on your table that you never even asked for. Classic. Total bill: $39 for two including tip and tax.
Photo Credit: Yelp
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