East Harbor Seafood Palace Visited 2/17/2018 3 Forks

East Harbor Seafood Palace  714 65th St., Brooklyn, NY 11220

Dim sum is one of my favorite foods so when it came time to celebrate Chinese New Year, Mabel and I thought it was only right to have some dim sum together.  We usually go to Golden Unicorn but we thought we'd be adventurous and try something new and different.  So we decided to haul our butt to Sunset Park in Brooklyn to give it a go.  Along with Flushing in Queens, Sunset Park has one of the largest population of Chinese people around NYC and you could really live here and never have to speak English if you want.  It's really a whole different world.  The only annoying thing is that it's far and a pain the ass to get to from the city.  It took Mabel and I over an hour to get there on the subway.

When we finally got to the restaurant it was complete mayhem, which I usually expect at most Chinese restaurants but this one took it to a whole other level.  We knew we came at a bad time (close to noon) so it was wall to wall of people and it was so confusing what was going on.  We ended up waiting over an hour to get seated and by that point we were about to pass out.  This place is a huge banquet type restaurant and it seems that you'll have better luck getting seated in larger parties instead of small parties.  When we finally sat down we were ready to order everything that came around.  While the carts were plentiful, many of them seemed to have the same things.  Like some dim sum places you've got to be aggressive and really flag them down if you want something.  Some of the wait staff was really nice but some were down right rude - even when we spoke to them in Chinese.  As for the food, it was totally fine and we were pretty much able to get all our favorite dishes.  As expected, some dishes better than others.  The dumplings were generally fresh and warm but others like the turnip cake was cold and unimpressive.

Overall it was like any other dim sum place that I've been to before and while the food was filling, it wasn't necessarily worth the hour long trek and hour long wait.  Maybe if I lived in the area and I could get there really early, I could see myself going there but for me, I'll stick with the usual suspects in Chinatown because at least I know it won't take 2 hours to have a meal there.  The one upside though is that the prices are cheaper here, which made the pain only slightly better.  Total bill:  $16.35/pp with tax and tip

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Pacificana - Visited 1/10/10 2.75 Forks

Pacificana 813 55th Street Brooklyn, NY 11230

I have always been a fan of Dim Sum but I usually go to Chinatown in the city since it's easier to get to. I had been to Pacificana for dinner once when a friend had a Red Egg party there about a year ago. My hairdresser had mentioned that she went there for dim sum and I had started seeing this place pop up in blogs recently, so I thought it was worth a try for dim sum. It's in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which is easy to get to, but a PAIN for parking. Not only is there just not enough parking but it's just very congested. After circling around for a while, we finally found a spot on 7th ave and 60th street. When we got there, there were tons of asians milling around the front and I was afraid that the wait would take an hour. Luckily, we got seated after 15 mins. It's hard to get a ton of dim sum with only 2 people, so we did the best we could. We got shumai, which was pretty big in size but it could have been a bit warmer. 2 orders of the crystal shrimp crepes, some sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves, radish cake, and pork buns. There was a pretty big selection of food and it came very rapidly. I think all the dishes could have been warmer...except for the tea, which was 100 degrees. I can see how this place could be pretty intimidating for non-asians as they don't really speak english there and they are kind of pushy. But it worked out fine for me. What I loved even more was the total bill, $22! For good cheap eats, chinatown is definitely the way to go!