Flavor Boulevard

Tag: xiaolongbao

  • Dimsum lunch at Koi Palace

      koi-palace
      There are a few unexpected things for me about Koi Palace. I didn’t expect it to be in the middle of PetSmart, Ross, 24 Hour Fitness, Outback, and CVS. Nor could I fathom why it was completely full at noon time on a Wednesday. People in Daly City don’t have to work on weekdays? What about schools? (plenty of school-age glanced at me mid-bites when I tried to spy the food on their table…) Inexplicable.

      kp-chive-shrimp-dumplings
      Perhaps the food here is really so good that work is meaningless without it? Among the things we got, a few really gave us that instant burst of satisfaction like when you pop a bubble-wrap bubble and made me forget work for a second. Such as the grilled chive and shrimp dumplings. Each ball plops into your mouth and fills the void so perfectly, you sink into a plump piece of shrimp every time you move your jaw. It takes some time to chew, and you kind of wish it would last even longer.

      kp-coffeeribs
      The espresso coffee ribs are another. You can definitely taste the coffee in that succulent, rich piece of meat. This is one of those examples of candied meat, an odd-sounding but undeniably addictive entanglements. If Koi Palace were a buffet, this would be what people pile on their plates.

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    • M.Y. China, xiao long bao and food reviews

        The restaurant is big, clean and convenient. It’s in Westfield San Francisco, a big chunk of the fourth floor of the shopping mall is restaurants, and M.Y. China is one of them. Sitting 50 feet from the kitchen and you can smell the intoxicating fumes of dumplings. We order two Chinese classics: xiao long bao (pork & crab juicy dumplings) and niu ro mien (beef hand-pulled egg noodle soup).

        mychina-niu-ro-mien
        The niu ro mien is good. Fourteen dollars. Melting tender beef, chewy noodle (not as chewy as I would like, but I’m not a fan of egg noodle anyway), dark, flavor-packed broth (which gets a bit too salty after a while and sends you drinking water like mad).

        mychina-xiao-long-bao
        The xiao long bao‘s are dry. Twelve dollars for five. There’s not enough broth in them. The dumpling skin is dried up on top, the carrot slice at the bottom, which supposedly helps preventing the dumpling from sticking to the spoon, disrupts the harmony in texture. The pork filling? This is where my friend and I disagree.

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      • Pair Dim Sum with Tea at Shanghai Dumpling King


          The waiter brought out a kettle of tea, but Nancy Togami waved him back, asking for just plain hot water. Carefully, she used her thermometer to check the water temperature. One hundred and eighty degree Fahrenheit, too cool to steep the Baochong and Phoenix Honey that she brought. But Nancy brought her own water too, which measured close to 200 degrees, so we used her water instead. I’ve never brought my own tea to a restaurant, but it makes sense: people bring their own wine to restaurants, and when you have good teas, there’s no reason to refrain from pairing them with good food. The dim sum at Shanghai Dumpling King proved to be perfect experiment material.

          Without Nancy, I probably would never have known of this hole in the wall way out on the west side of San Fran, and probably too lazy to get here because it’s not 2 blocks away from the BART and I’d doubt the dim sum would be worth anything farther than that. Now, dim sum are good. You have to really suck as a cook to make ground meat in a piece of dough taste bad (it happens, though), and I crave potstickers and xiao long bao at least once every other night, but the gap between the potsticker in my head and the potsticker in my mouth always ended up bigger than my head, so I can’t comprehend it. There’s some kind of epiphany reaction I want to get from eating dim sum that I’ve never gotten. But I think today came really, really close. Because of a duck and two teas.


          The duck set the mood. We stood in front of the restaurant before it opened, so they had to rush setting up things to let us in. We were the first customers of a Sunday. Few minutes after we placed our order, the guy strode out asking if we would like some duck, the kitchen just finished steaming one. Yes, of course, we said. Out came small chunks of legs and thighs in a simple white bowl with a sprig of coriander, the meat still pink, the skin moist in a sunglow shade. It’s not chewing gum and it doesn’t fall apart like cornmeal, it has all the right tenderness, the right juiciness, the right saltiness. I couldn’t pry any information from the waiter except that it’s steamed. But they must’ve put something in the water.

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