Dim Sum Lunch

We haven't been avoiding dim sum, but we also haven't made a meal of it yet. Frankly, there are dumplings everywhere. In street carts. Piled high in small shops. On every menu we see. However, with a little time and a recommendation from the concierge, we walked a few short blocks to "Linn" and the little steamer boxes started flying.

I've been to many of the highly regarded (and not so highly regarded) dim sum places in the District. My favorite is the sounds-like-a-translation"Hong Kong on the Boulevard East", out in Wheaton. I don't think Linn is worth travelling to Shanghai for, but it would definitely, definitely be worth the trip to Wheaton.



Coffee, green tea, beer, soy sauce, chili oil... it's important to stay hydrated. Also, shrimp dumplings, veggie dumplings and pork bun. The shrimp dumplings were stuffed with nearly-whole shrimp, held together by some sort of mousse. The veggie dumplings were wonderful, full of chopped greens sauteed in oil and garlic. The pork was pretty similar to what I get in the states.



A delicious, creamy papaya puff, a mediocre stir-fried chicken dish that you shoveled into the surrounding sesame pockets, and a wild-looking durian puff. The durian puff tasted fine, though the crispy top fragmented when I bit down, and little bits of fried stuff littered the tablecloth in front of me.



A nice seafood soup. The coolest-looking bit was the crab, which was thicker and had more spidery legs than our best-crabs-in-the-world blue crabs. Unfortunately, the crab meat had been cooked to a tasteless paste. The broth, however, was so rich and delicious that my mother thought they added butter to it. Who knows.



Me trying to work it out with the chopsticks. My friend Cat, who is from Hong Kong, used to tell me that holding the chopsticks so close to the front was a sign of something, but I've forgotten what. In any case, clearly I am still pulling the same move, three years later. On a related note, at the end of this meal, the table in front of me will be littered with drops of soy sauce and chili oil, little bits of durian puff and many other pieces of detritus. Quite often, after the plates are cleared, a waiter will swoop in and lay a napkin over the bombed-out remains of the tablecloth. This is something I need to work on.