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Sep. 26th, 2015 11:23 pm
Dangerous dumplings
Tomorrow is the Moon Festival so today we made the trip down to South Chinatown for mooncakes. I knew we were cutting it close and I wouldn't've been surprised to find that they were out of their proprietary mixed nut mooncakes. I didn't expect that they'd be out of mooncakes altogether. We ended up buying a couple from Chiu Quon instead (lotus paste and winter melon, so the Old Man will end up having a bite or two at most). We also got a few other sweets to tide us over, since Nuphy wasn't due to meet up with us for another half hour.
We all vaguely remembered having spotted on our last visit a place we'd like to try in future, but as none of us could recall the name or any details, I simply Googled "best dumplings Chinatown", since![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu said he wanted jiǎozi. Among the chaff we found Mike Sula's write-up from last February of a place in the Richland Food Court called Qing Xiang Yuan (青香苑) which specialised in a kind of soup dumpling called guàntángjiǎozi (灌湯餃子). That didn't catch my attention as much as the fact that they were hand-filled to order, so we made a beeline for the place and texted Nuphy the location.
Sula had lamented that the food court was "almost always nearly empty", but that wasn't the case today, which meant that there was a 20-minute wait for food. But that and the fact that the locale was almost too authentic (the bunker-like lack of ambience and general grottiness bringing back culture shock from our trip to Beijing) were the only drawbacks. If anything, the dumplings exceeded my expectations, being every bit as tender and fresh as the ones we got in China but more juicy and perhaps even more delicate as well. We kept going back until we'd had three orders: lamb and coriander, pork and leek, and zucchini and mushroom (alas, the least interesting of the three).
Both the old farts had brought their appetites, though, so the GWO ended up ordering a big plate of yakisoba from the Taiwanese/Japanese noodly place in the corner while Nuphy plumped for the "spicy lamb chops" from 紅辣椒 (the English name might be "Snack Planet" unless that's where he got his mango smoothie). Fortunately for me, the chiles and chili flakes were sprinkled on after the fact, so I could shake them off to sample the meat, which was curiously fluffy in texture. Oddly, none of the places served hot tea (I joked with the Old Man about asking for some dumpling water, like we had to drink in Chongqing)--not even the sushi place in the corner.
We decided to walk off lunch with a circuit through the mall, which was packed with attendees for the Moon Festival, and then back to Feida, since Nuphy wanted jindeui. Amazingly, they were out of those, too, so we looped back to the Saint Anna Bakery, stopping on the way to check out the new Chinatown Branch of CPL. We were impressed by the exterior on our last trip, but lots of beautiful buildings are badly non-functional inside. Not this one. It's a great space, with enclosed community rooms on the main floor for activities (including what looked like it could've been a funeral) and study rooms upstairs. The noisier areas are concentrated on the north side, and it gets quieter going south towards the study room as the stacks switch from English to Chinese. (There seemed a roughly equal number of both and plenty of new acquisitions.) I had a great chat with one of the staff, who turned out to be a graduate of UofC's library school back when there still was such a thing.
Saint Anna was a blast from the past as well. I don't think it's changed since that mall was built over two decades ago. Unfortunately, this meant the sweets were less than satisfactory (not to speak of the bag tea), but the experience was something else. A smiling 91 year-old came up to compliment me on my beard and chat briefly about his trajectory, which had him landing here in '62 and eventually starting a business hauling computer waste back to Hong Kong for recycling. Nuphy asked me about the specials pasted on the wall, and I attracted the attention of the waitress trying to explain the difference between the flesh and moon radicals. (Sadly, I managed to misread 酸 "sour" as 脆 "crispy", only discovering my mistake as a thumbed through McCawley on the trip back.)
We all vaguely remembered having spotted on our last visit a place we'd like to try in future, but as none of us could recall the name or any details, I simply Googled "best dumplings Chinatown", since
monshu said he wanted jiǎozi. Among the chaff we found Mike Sula's write-up from last February of a place in the Richland Food Court called Qing Xiang Yuan (青香苑) which specialised in a kind of soup dumpling called guàntángjiǎozi (灌湯餃子). That didn't catch my attention as much as the fact that they were hand-filled to order, so we made a beeline for the place and texted Nuphy the location.Sula had lamented that the food court was "almost always nearly empty", but that wasn't the case today, which meant that there was a 20-minute wait for food. But that and the fact that the locale was almost too authentic (the bunker-like lack of ambience and general grottiness bringing back culture shock from our trip to Beijing) were the only drawbacks. If anything, the dumplings exceeded my expectations, being every bit as tender and fresh as the ones we got in China but more juicy and perhaps even more delicate as well. We kept going back until we'd had three orders: lamb and coriander, pork and leek, and zucchini and mushroom (alas, the least interesting of the three).
Both the old farts had brought their appetites, though, so the GWO ended up ordering a big plate of yakisoba from the Taiwanese/Japanese noodly place in the corner while Nuphy plumped for the "spicy lamb chops" from 紅辣椒 (the English name might be "Snack Planet" unless that's where he got his mango smoothie). Fortunately for me, the chiles and chili flakes were sprinkled on after the fact, so I could shake them off to sample the meat, which was curiously fluffy in texture. Oddly, none of the places served hot tea (I joked with the Old Man about asking for some dumpling water, like we had to drink in Chongqing)--not even the sushi place in the corner.
We decided to walk off lunch with a circuit through the mall, which was packed with attendees for the Moon Festival, and then back to Feida, since Nuphy wanted jindeui. Amazingly, they were out of those, too, so we looped back to the Saint Anna Bakery, stopping on the way to check out the new Chinatown Branch of CPL. We were impressed by the exterior on our last trip, but lots of beautiful buildings are badly non-functional inside. Not this one. It's a great space, with enclosed community rooms on the main floor for activities (including what looked like it could've been a funeral) and study rooms upstairs. The noisier areas are concentrated on the north side, and it gets quieter going south towards the study room as the stacks switch from English to Chinese. (There seemed a roughly equal number of both and plenty of new acquisitions.) I had a great chat with one of the staff, who turned out to be a graduate of UofC's library school back when there still was such a thing.
Saint Anna was a blast from the past as well. I don't think it's changed since that mall was built over two decades ago. Unfortunately, this meant the sweets were less than satisfactory (not to speak of the bag tea), but the experience was something else. A smiling 91 year-old came up to compliment me on my beard and chat briefly about his trajectory, which had him landing here in '62 and eventually starting a business hauling computer waste back to Hong Kong for recycling. Nuphy asked me about the specials pasted on the wall, and I attracted the attention of the waitress trying to explain the difference between the flesh and moon radicals. (Sadly, I managed to misread 酸 "sour" as 脆 "crispy", only discovering my mistake as a thumbed through McCawley on the trip back.)