New York Narrative 3: Chinatown Chow

First a little info from the helpful folks at Wikipedia....

Dim sum refers to a style of Chinese food prepared as small bite-sized or individual portions of food traditionally served in small steamer baskets or on small plates. Dim sum is also well known for the unique way it is served in some restaurants, wherein fully cooked and ready-to-serve dim sum dishes are carted around the restaurant for customers to choose their orders while seated at their tables.
Cuisine Traditional dim sum includes various types of steamed buns such as cha siu baau, dumplings and rice noodle rolls (cheong fun), which contain a range of ingredients, including beef, chicken, pork, prawns and vegetarian options. Many dim sum restaurants also offer plates of steamed green vegetables, roasted meats, congee porridge and other soups. Dessert dim sum is also available and many places offer the customary egg tart.

Dim sum can be cooked by steaming and frying, among other methods. The serving sizes are usually small and normally served as three or four pieces in one dish. It is customary to order family style, sharing dishes among all members of the dining party. Because of the small portions, people can try a wide variety of food.
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We enjoy getting Dim Sum with Jessie almost every time we've ever gone to NYC. Scratch that...every time. It's a must.

We even took 16 month old Tessa to Dim Sum in NYC for her first (and my first) Peking Duck.

Since Mom had never had Dim Sum but love Chinese food, I knew it was a good stop during our trip. So Saturday morning we met Jessie's boyfriend Mike in Chinatown.

Mike and Mom are allergic to nuts and Mike had a handy card with stating his allergy in many languages. What a handy and simple idea! Our waiter was kind of a character and suggest they just get tattoos on their arm with a picture of a nut with a red line drawn through it. That's not a bad idea either.

Dim sum is basically a variety of steamed dumplings and such and you order small plates being passed around on carts until you are full.

Tessa is already a fan of pork buns (aka, cha siu baau if you want to sound super cultural) because we buy them frozen at the Asian grocery. It's one of her favorite breakfasts. So she was right in her element at this restaurant. Four pork buns and a couple of egg rolls later she was full.

While in Chinatown we had to seize the opportunity to have Bubble Tea. I got introduced to the stuff when we lived in San Jose because it's available everywhere. In Indiana, not so much.

It's basically like a sugary drink or smoothie but with big fat gooey black tapiocas to sweeten it. You suck them through fat straws and chewy them up like sweet sweet eyeballs.

Sounds weird, tastes so good.

Tessa got strawberry and liked it, while I enjoyed my honeydew one. I'm trying to look excited in this pic but I think it has more of a serial killer vibe.

It's the look of a desperate Midwesterner who got slimy hot shrimp dumplings and gooey tapioca balls in the same day....and couldn't be happier.