I came across this place when I was walking to Maison Premiere one day and was super excited and skeptical at the same time. Dim sum in Williamsburg?! If it was good, that would be a great thing for me to not have to go all the way into the city for it, but I'm always a bit dubious of dim sum outside of Chinatown.
Mabel, Aarti and I had just finished watching a movie at Nitehawk and wandered around the area for a place to eat. Mabel is usually my go to dim sum buddy so we figured we'd give this place a try. The setting and decor is more civilized than in Chinatown - it's sit down but you select your dim sum from a checklist - so no push carts or screaming waitresses here. They have your usual line-up for shumai, hargow, baos, and sticky rice but the variety is most definitely not the same as you would get in Chinatown. They also have vegetarian friendly dim sum but it is a bit of a challenge to get the good stuff without either pork or shrimp. They also have a separate menu with more traditional Chinese entrees on there if you didn't want dim sum.
We got a mix of things: turnip cake, hargow, shumai, vegetarian sticky rice, steamed cabbage dumplings, vegetarian rice noodles, sauteed eggplant and chinese broccoli. The prices here are higher than in Chinatown, ranging from $4-8 each. The food came out pretty quickly with the turnip cake coming out first. While it was fine, I missed having come right off the hot plate like they do in Chinatown - this one was missing a bit of crispy edge to it but overall it tasted similar to the ones I've had before. Next came the hargow (shrimp dumplings) which were actually pretty good and on par with the ones in Chinatown. We had gotten 2 orders which was the right move based on the rest of the food here. The sticky rice was the kind wrapped in a lotus leaf but because it was vegetarian and didn't have the Chinese sausage or chicken in it, it felt like it was missing some well needed flavor and salt. Next I tried the steamed cabbage dumplings and again, no real fault of theirs, but I'm just much more of a pork or shrimp dumpling kind of person and found it to be a bit bland.
However, the next veggie dish I tried was the complete opposite and had way too much flavor to it. The rice noodles were steamed and covered in hoisin and peanut sauce. I had actually envisioned a totally different dish (my favorite shrimp crepe in rice noodles) and was let down that this wasn't it. The peanut sauce was way too heavy - it was super delicious at first but after eating a few bites you start to realize how overwhelming both hoisin and peanut sauce can be individually and together. The eggplant dish was your typical sauteed eggplant with bean curd in it but again, it felt like it needed a pinch of salt to it. Lastly, I had the steamed Chinese broccoli and that's a dish that's really hard to get wrong and it was a crowd favorite - it helped to cleanse the palate of heavy peanut sauce and slightly oily eggplant. It was only at the end did I realize that we never got our shumai - even though I would have been the only one to eat it, and was pretty full at this point I was bummed because based on the hargow which was pretty good, I would have expected the shumai to be just as good.
While it's most definitely nice to have this place in a pinch in the neighborhood, it most certainly isn't a substitute of going to Chinatown at all. I appreciate what they are trying to do here and maybe the lack of salt is them trying to use less MSG, but when I want dim sum, I just want to go all out and have the push carts, screaming ladies, lots of variety, and lots of salty goodness. Total bill: $24/pp with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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