A smile and a nod

Seems like we may have a date for Crazy Brother's visit. Dad and his wife are coming up the last weekend in October to watch their grandkids while my stepsister and her husband escape for a few days, so this would neatly solve the what-do-we-do-with-Dad problem. The weather could be shit, but it could also be aces; not much you can do about that. Still trying to come up with outings. I suggested the Mexican Museum of Fine Arts, but he tried to negotiate me down from an hour to twenty minutes. He also wants to do "some robot thing which is mainly for kids". I haven't a whisper of a clue what that could be, but he says he's sending an URL.

The one plans CB has been definite about are his plans to eat his way through town. He fondly remembers his visit to Ed Debevic's way back when, so it looks like we might be stuck making a return trip. I'm hoping for Chicago pizza we can just order in from Calo's. For dim sum, I think he'd be plenty content with Furama, but monshu suggested we could reprise our trip down with the water taxi. According to the website "weekend Chinatown service will continue through October", so presumably it will come down to the weather. 'Cause if there's one place you don't want to be on a shitty squawly day, it's on a boat.

But in anticipation of such a trip, we headed down on Sunday to audition Ming Hin. We've had dinner there and liked it, but we've never tried their dim sum. Our hopes were that, having taken over the former Happy Chef space, some of that venue's legendary quality might've rubbed off on them. Lao You Ju was a possibility as well, but with some prompting Nuphy eventually remembered having dim summed there, and we figured that the fact that it took a while for that to come back to him didn't exactly speak well.

The experience was a bit...odd. We arrived in the middle of a rush and to avoid having us wait more than a few minutes, they opened up the private rooms in the back. We followed a waitress as she snaked through the length of the restaurant, past rooms full of noisy dinners and a two fully stocked bars, wondering if we weren't eventually going to find ourselves in another restaurant. The first order of business was to turn off the flat screen tv tuned to TBS; the second was to message Nuphy to tell him where they fuck we were; and the third was to actually look at the menu and order. Steps 1 and 2 were undertaken in vain: I had to ask an employee to turn off the set for me and Nuphy ended up arguing with an incompetent and uncomprehending reception. "I think they defaulted to what you usually do when someone makes a request you don't understand: Pretend like you understand and follow your usual procedure." I had retrace our sinuous path and rescue him.

Step 3, on the other hand, worked out much better, although the first batch of dumplings was slow coming out. I wouldn't've have minded one bit if they'd been made to order (that was the miracle of Happy Chef), but they were simply very fresh. Despite the long trip from the kitchen, nothing made it to us cold, but not everything was piping hot. (I'd be interested in knowing how much of that was due to the waitrons batching dishes for the frontier rather than bringing everything out at once.)

In any case, we had only one misfire, brisket with rolled rice noodles. On paper it looked like an ingenious solution to the challenge of eating funn, but the karaktteok-like chunks weren't as tasty as they might've been and the meat was too chewy. The Malayan sponge cake was--strangely enough--a bit salty, but made it up for it with its incomparable lightness. We liked the peanuts in the Teochiu dumplings and the fried taro rolls were a more interesting alternative to Nuphy's beloved taro puffs. There were also nods of approval for the "corn cakes" (pan-fried dumplings with sweet corn) and the tofu-skin rolls.

We actually appreciated the portion sizes being a little less generous (about half what you'd get at Furama) because it allowed us to sample more dishes without going all Mr Creosote. Prices were the same as elsewhere, but even so you'd have to be a real glutton to end up paying much more than $15 (though you do have to figure in a full-rate tip for the attentive service; I've never seen empty steamers vanish so reliably). Even out among hoi polloi the setting is more elegant than your usual dim sum palace.

All in all, a viable alternative to the other options and a welcome change of pace, but not really worth a special trip. Particularly not for Kramer, for whom more is always better and quality of ingredients is irrelevant. If we do take him down there, I suggest a return to Phoenix.