Sun Sui Wah

Occasion: Dim sum with the family
Location: Sun Sui Wah on No. 3 Road in Richmond (sunsuiwah.com) [Note: another location in Vancouver proper]
Edibles: har gao; shu mai; fish congee; shrimp fun; pan-fried daikon cake; leaf tripe; spring rolls; rice with chicken and Chinese sausage; Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce; tapioca pudding; mango pudding; egg tarts (you eat with my mom, you leave the table groaning in pain)

Musings: My go-to dim sum place in Vancouver. They were one of the last restaurants in Vancouver to still have the little old ladies pushing the carts around; they've recently gone over to the dark side, a.k.a. the order form.

Sun Sui Wah's food is solid across the board, from the gringo favorites like shu mai to more obscure animal extremities and organs, should you feel more adventurous. The chicken rice, in particular, is not to be missed.

Flamingo

Occasion: Family dinner with my grandparents, my aunt, my cousins, my mom and my brother
Location: Flamingo Chinese Restaurant on Cambie between W 59th and W 60th Ave in Vancouver
Edibles: West Lake soup; taro duck; Chinese broccoli and beef; lobster in cream sauce with noodles; steamed tilapia; crispy chicken; tapioca pudding

Musings: We've been going to this restaurant for over twenty years. The menu has barely changed in all that time. So it's not the most sophisticated Chinese food Vancouver has to offer, but it's our neighborhood restaurant and it always feels good to come back. Upon our arrival, the manager (who we had seen rise from the waitstaff to his current position) came right over to greet my mom by name and take our order.

Everything tasted just as it should, just as it used to. (Well, with the exception of one meat pie dish, which the manager immediately whisked away and took off our bill.)

Restaurants will come and go but as long as the Flamingo is open for business, we will be there.

Golden Ocean

Occasion: Dim sum (the third time in a week!) with my mom, Amy and Sam
Location: Golden Ocean Seafood Restaurant on W 41st Ave at Maple St in Vancouver
Edibles: leaf tripe (omasum); stewed honeycomb tripe (reticulum) and beef lung; chicken feet; bbq pork buns; braised Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce; pork, fish and peanut congee; sesame balls

Musings: As you can see, we got some more unusual things this time around. I'm not a huge fan of lung or chicken feet, but I thought the leaf tripe was really well done. Strangely enough, with all the offal we ordered, the dish that stuck out the most was the sesame balls.

Sesame balls are usually the size of golf balls, or slightly larger, and filled with red bean paste or lotus paste. They serve a peculiar variation at Golden Ocean with no filling at all but fried for a longer time, until they're puffed up to the size of ostrich eggs. (I'm not kidding about the size.) The resulting hollow pastry has a thinner wall and is crispier than the standard. I've been to quite a few dim sums in my time but this is the first time I'd seen this. Dim sum innovation - go figure!

Red Star

Occasion: Dim sum with my mom and her friends
Location: Red Star Seafood Restaurant on Granville between W 66th and W 67 Ave in Vancouver
Edibles: lots of the same classics from the Flushing dim sum outing - shrimp fun; shu mai; har gao; pork and thousand-year-old egg congee; steamed daikon cake (what can I say, I'm a creature of habit), plus a few new items - Chinese broccoli sauteed with garlic; ma lai cake; green tea jelly

Musings: A couple of pluses and a bunch of minuses. This place doesn't hold a candle to my favorite Vancouver dim sum place, Sun Sui Wah in Richmond.

Plus: 1) The shu mai and har gao were huge - easily the size of two in almost any other restaurant. 2) The ma lai cake was delicate and fluffy. Yum.

Minus: 1) The shrimp fun had pungent garlic chives (a.k.a. Chinese chives) in them, an herb I never acquired a taste for. 2) The pork in the congee seemed a little off. 3) The green tea jelly was just weird. 4) No ladies with the carts; you order off a menu.

Asian Jewels (fka Ocean Jewels)

Occasion: Dim sum with two of my Penn posse, Kathy and Yining
Location: Ocean Jewels Seafood Restaurant on 39th Ave near College Point Blvd in Flushing [2010 update: now called Asian Jewels]
Edibles: the classics - shrimp fun; shu mai; har gao; pork and thousand-year-old egg congee; bbq pork buns; steamed daikon cake; sesame balls with lotus paste filling; mini egg tarts

Musings: Leagues better than anything I've had in Manhattan. All the food was piping hot, well-seasoned and not too greasy (at least, not by Chinese food standards). And it was served by old-school dim sum ladies wheeling carts around, shouting out their offerings in Mandarin and Cantonese. For me, the standout was the congee but I wouldn't recommend it to any neophyte white folks out there.

To make room for other Flushing delicacies, we were fairly restrained in our ordering. The total bill came out to only $25 and we walked out feeling moderately full and extremely satisfied. Don't bother fighting the tourist crowd in Chinatown next time you're in the mood for dim sum - the good stuff's in Flushing.