China Pearl: Another Visit

Another visit to China Pearl! I mostly enjoyed retreads of dishes from these two posts. They sometimes surprise with new vegetarian offerings. In the case of our most recent trip, one of the servers suggested this veggie dish. I believe it came off the big serving station at one end of the dining room, like the Chinese broccoli. This dish is basically a fresh tofu roll. I've bought stuff like this in grocery stores in the past. The outside is a tofu skin roll, flavored with a little five spice and/or licorice, layered with cooked veggies, mushroom and carrot, and tofu pieces, and rolled into a spiral. There was a black coating or layer on the tofu, too, it might have been a little bit of nori seaweed, not sure? The roll was already sliced when it was brought to the table, which made it easy to share. It's served cold, which is typical for this kind of veggie roll. I think it's supposed to approximate a certain type of prepared duck. I like the flavor, and the texture, I am not sure if it would be for everyone. Cold, the flavors of the spices stand out a bit more, but I think more people would like it warm. It's a little sweet, and chewy. The layered prep helps lighten the density of the dense tofu in the filling.

And here's a re-tread of the veggie steam dumplings. These are simple in terms of flavor but still nice! The frozen peas and carrots on the top are funny.

China Pearl Redux

Last month included a visit to China Pearl, with Ben, Nicole, their sons James and Zac, and Rydia and Antonio. It's a place I used to frequent in my grad student days. I don't know if dim sum is not as popular as it used to be or what, but we haven't had to wait for a table even for a pretty large party the last couple of timed I visited. I tried a few new things this time around, and have pictures of a few things I didn't catch last time! First up are these new veggie dumplings. I think I have seen these on the carts before, but didn't realize that they were vegetarian! The old veggie dumplings were simple crescent/half-circle affairs, but these ones are much more ornate in shape! The filling is not identical to the old filling, although the filling does still include nuts. I think the nuts are walnut bits. Otherwise, mostly napa-type cabbage and carrots. Despite the decorative peas on the top, no peas are in the filling!

These baked buns were on the same cart as the pork buns that look like this and spring rolls and shrimp crisp triangles and the like. The red dot in the middle distinguishes them from the pork buns of this type. The cart attendant suggested that they were pineapple, but I didn't get any pineapple out of them! They didn't seem to have any filling at all, really. Just pleasant, freshly baked lightly sweet dough with crumble topping. The bun is chewy, but not very dense, and the sweetness level is not cloying. These are pleasant buns, and I would consider them instead of other dessert options, like custard buns or custard cups.

Half-devoured plate! The exploded thing in the lower right is one of the veggie dumplings, you can see the exposed filling. It's joined by a baked bun and half a sesame ball.

The following picture is for the elusive fried dough rice roll! Rice rolls are very popular, and most of the ones on the rice roll cart are beef or shrimp. This one, with the fried dough, is only available on that cart sometimes. I you don't see it on the cart and ask about it, you get the "later" response, which can really mean all done for the day. I have a feeling this is because they don't "sit" as well as the meat filling ones. But on to the substance! These rolls are, yes, fried dough, wrapped in a rice noodle-like wrapper. They are sprinkled with what I think is cilantro? It adds a little bit of flavor, but not much. After you ask for it from the cart, the server douses it in a thinned, sweetened soy sauce. This is the standard sauce for rice rolls, the frozen fungus rice rolls I like come with a packet. This results in the presentation below. And let me just say, I love this stuff. LOVE IT! We actually got a second round when it appeared again, even though we had all just said we were completely full and done eating.

Now, this is next roll was in my last China Pearl review, but I didn't have a good picture for it. These large rolls have a tofu-skin wrapper, and are deep fried. The filling is cut into strips, with pieces of carrot, bamboo shoot, mushroom, baby corn, and a few other things. The sauce they put on them is again, soy based, but with a little vinegar along with the bit of sweetening. The tricky thing with these is that when the server snips them into pieces, they rarely get cut through all the way, so you have to be a little careful and rip the segments apart. These are one of my favorite savory dishes at China Pearl.

I should note that while everything I ate is to the best of my knowledge vegetarian, I have no guarantees, just the best knowledge of the floor staff. As noted in my previous review, some of the sauces can be suspect, though I am pretty sure that the rice roll and tofu skin roll sauces are veggie. If you have an allergy to nuts or fish and shellfish, you should probably give the whole thing a pass. For example, the tofu skin rolls are usually on the same cart as shrimp spring rolls and those crispy crab bundles, which the servers cut with the same scissors. And I doubt they have a dedicated vegetarian deep fryer. Still, I am willing to go there and risk a little food touching.

Score: 4.5/5 - A lot of good stuff here. I guess I just can't give it a 5 because I still miss some of the dishes from Vegetarian Dim Sum House in New York.

Mary's with Blake

I hit Mary Chung's last month with Blake. Here he is modeling his Suan La Chow Show, which I have never had since it's meaty. Some kind of meaty dumplings in spicy broth.

Mary's does menu-based dim sum on weekend mornings, but we were here for dinner. Still, I ended up ordering one of the popular appetizers that is of course a dim sum feature. Scallion Pancake!

The scallion pancakes here are thick and chewy, not crisp and flaky, and definitely deep fried. They're served with a lightly sweetened soy chili sauce. While not quite the standard scallion pancake, these are amazing. If you go to Mary Chung's, get at least one for your table! As an added bonus, a friend asked and has been assured that these are vegan!

Little Chef Vegetable Spring Rolls

These spring rolls are another Kam Man frozen purchase. These are serious about the vegetable part. The filling is pretty much just shreds of cabbage and carrot and whole green peas! The only seasoning I can detect is pepper. The shells are standard pastry wrap, so no complaints there. The toaster oven prep we gave them yielded acceptable outside crispness. Overall, a totally decent spring roll, I just wish there was a little more flavor to them. I would rate them slightly higher than the K Fat Inc. rolls, and of course much much higher than the "grain" rolls. Looking back at that review, I am amazed I gave them a 2... I might have to revise that down. Having to finish the packages was like torture.

Score: 3.5/5 - Totally presentable spring rolls.

Sauces

Sauces are an important complement to dim sum. There are two generic sauce types we use with dim sum around our house, sweet and savory. The sweet sauce is almost always a sweet chili sauce, here it's Mae Ploy brand. I do like plain "duck sauce" too, or whatever one calls the slightly fruit based sweet sauce used with appetizers, but I like the little added spark of chili. It's not really very hot, though, usually. This particular brand is not super exciting to me, I find the chili bits a little too tough without much benefit. The savory sauce of choice is a vegetarian take on "oyster" sauce, here Vegetarian Mushroom Flavored Sauce by Coin Tree. This is a salty, thick brown sauce. Not hoisin sauce. Thinner than that, and no real flavor besides salty and umami. This particular one is actually quite good. It's a little thinner and lighter in flavor than many I've had, and actually went really well on the radish cakes. I'm not going to rate them properly, I just wanted to show you my typical sauce array!

Chen Hsiang Frozen Radish Cake

Radish cakes are one of those things that you usually only get in a restaurant, and usually in a restaurant they have shrimp bits in them and are served with "oyster" sauce. These ones I bought frozen at Kam Man. In a restaurant they would be cooked on a griddle, fried to crispiness on both sides and kinda pasty in the middle. Pan frying these on not too high heat gets the same effect. I had mine with vegetarian mushroom sauce; thick dark salty sauces are the way to go with these things. I enjoy this brand Chen Hsiang, but I have to admit that I haven't really seen another frozen version, which surprises me since they don't lose a lot in freezing.



Score: 4/5 - An overall satisfying radish cake. They're supposed to be like fried paste!

Homei Custard Bun

Another bunch of buns from Kam Man are in the review pipeline. These custard buns from Homei are above average. The buns themselves are on the small side, as many custard buns are. The dough is soft, and the bun skin is relatively thin. The custard is a generous portion. The custard is smooth and tasty, still loose, not a firm gel. The flavor is overall pleasant. I would buy these again.



Score: 4/5 - Above average, nice, relatively thin but fluffy bread, generous sweet filling with good texture.

China Pearl Review

China Pearl (9 Tyler St., Boston, MA) is a huge dim sum palace that I have frequented on numerous occasions. This is the typical, red and gold decorated, push carts and punch-cards type of dim sum place. Have I mentioned that this place actually has two floors? Ack, I think they have an elevator for the carts! I recently visited for my friend Nicole's birthday, in a party of 10. We were lucky to get seated rapidly.

With so many people in the party, we were able to get and try a lot of stuff. I of course stuck to the vegetarian stuff, so there aren't any meaty pictures here... Even with a few of my favorites awol (the rice roll long donut, fried bread inside a rice roll doused in sweet soy sauce, is an elusive target, with the chance of getting it 50/50 any time you go, and the half-moon vegetable dumplings with walnut were also impossible to find this time), I still stuffed myself like crazy. It's hard to eat it all even if you take it easy.

First up, Chinese broccoli with dark sauce. This vegetable is a crispy stalk, like a broccoli rabe with more stalk and less leaf and buds, which is lightly sauteed. They put a dark sauce on this that may not be vegetarian. It's a savory umami sauce, I buy similar sauces for use at home that are vegetarian, but it could be oyster sauce... So sometimes I avoid this, but it is very tasty and probably the healthiest thing here.

Egg custard cups! They're flaky and light on the outside, and firm but smooth on the inside. The custard flavor is eggy, but not dominantly so. Better than buying them at a pastry shop.

Lotus buns, steam buns with sticky sweet paste on the inside. I have never gotten much from lotus paste as a flavor. It's a simple smooth sweet paste. The texture is good, it's not mealy or grainy, just soft and almost creamy.

Sesame balls are a classic favorite. These are chewy thick dough balls coated in sesame seeds with red bean paste on the insides. They're deep fried, so they end up a little crispy on the outside. The flavors are distinct, with the toasted sesame crust and an actual strong red-bean flavor for the paste.

These baked custard buns have the same custard inside them that the next bunch of fluffy custard buns. The custard is softer than in the custard pastry tarts, quite sweet, but still eggy. The crust on top is a sugar crumble crust, sweet but not too sweet. The bread of the bun itself is fluffy and just a little chewy. In the right corner of the picture you can see a tofu skin roll poking out. These are like giant sprint rolls with a wrapped tofu skin instead of a pastry wrapper. They are deep fried. The filling has strips of bamboo shoot, mushroom bits, carrots, baby corn, and such. The filling is pieces of these veggies, pretty well cooked, but large, and will totally just fall out of there. The rolls are relatively oily, but I love em. Don't know why I don't have a separate picture...

Next, fluffy steamed custard buns... How can you go wrong? Other than finger photo bombs...

A relatively new offering for China Pearl, edamame. These were pretty thoroughly steamed, and lightly spiced. There was a distinct sea-salt flavor, but some other subtle spices. Definitely some light pepper. There were hints of other spices I couldn't pin down. Maybe there was a tiny bit of ginger in the water? While I thought these could have been a cooked a little less, I thought the flavor was surprisingly subtle and good.

Finally, true desserts. This is silken tofu in a light honey ginger sauce. The honey is dilute, and the ginger flavor is light. The tofu is otherwise unsweetened. It's a surprise hit dessert. I should have taken a picture to show you of the serving cart, which has a giant wooden barrel for the soft tofu, which the server ladles out into bowls, then pours on the sauce. It's a very different dessert, and not overwhelmingly sweet. On the left, you can see the mango pudding cup. It's more of a firm jello, but it't probably made with agar, it's that firm. There are little shreds of real mango in there, too.

Overall, China Pearl gives the full dim sum experience, and actually has a lot of vegetarian stuff, though if you don't know what's what, you could have a hard time. Ask the waiters and the servers, but be aware that a fair number of the cart servers don't speak a lot of English. The maitre'd is a busy person, but can help you out in a pinch. Anyway, even if you just get your regular frozen favorites, like custard buns, they're just a little better fresh from a cart! And frankly, this is a cheap proposition. You probably couldn't manage $20 of dim sum a person!

Score: 4.5/5 - There's plenty of good stuff here besides sweets. Beware of sauces!

Dim Sum Breakfast at Home

So half of the time, I'm eating what's probably technically dim sum as dinner appetizers or sides, punching up a big veggie curry or noodle dish with some tasty treats to make a fancier meal. The rest of the time, I'm making a dim sum based brunch. This is a picture of the one I reviewed the chive dumplings from.

Along with the chive dumplings we've got the Vegetable Rice Roll and the last of the grainy Spring Rolls, just to finish them off, along with sweet chili sauce. The nice thing about the dim sum brunch like this is that it's possible to balance all this stuff even though it's all cooking differently. In this case, the chive dumplings were pan fried, the rice roll was microwaved, and the spring rolls were in the toaster oven.

Net Spring Rolls!

I got these Vegetarian Net Spring Roll Cha Gio Re Chay frozen at the Kam Man. These are another old favorite that we used to get all the time. I bake these in a toaster oven instead of deep frying them, and that ends up being OK. I love the net texture on the spring roll skin. Flakes of the net break off as soon as you bite in, but that's OK. The filling on these is a little weird. There's some kind of root veggie paste, probably from the "yambean root", that makes the filling stick together, so that the small, finely diced, pieces of carrots and mushrooms and cabbage and the like don't just fall out. Quite small pieces. The flavor of the filling and the roll are pretty mild. I always use sauce on them of some kind, pink chili sauce or dark mushroom sauce (which is a substitute for fish sauce and doesn't really taste like mushrooms) usually, but hoisin sauce would work.

Score: 4/5 - The filling is inoffensive and has a good texture, but I am really more into the crispy texture of the layers of net wrapper.

Guanpoh Vegetarian Char Siew Buns

Vegetarian roasted pork buns? Sign me up! These Guanpoh Vegetarian Char Siew Buns are medium size buns, with that sort of pinched texturing at the top. The dough is soft and fine, as expected, but the stand-out is the filling. The fake pork is textured to be a little chewy but not rubbery, and the pieces of it are small. The barbecue sauce is sticky enough that the pieces of pork stick together. The flavor is sweet and salty as expected, but not overwhelming in either direction, with the sort of orangy-pinky-brown color that is a little under-represented in the picture on the package. (Otherwise, I really like this packaging, the green and gold scheme looks really good.) Overall, this is one of my favorite buns. I used to buy these buns at the Super 88, but they stopped carrying them for years. Now that our local spot has changed into a Kam Man, they are back!

Score: 5/5 - What can I say, I like fake meat barbecue!

Phoenix Bun

These Phoenix Buns are kind of fascinating. The paste inside these is a slightly salted, slightly sweetened duck egg yolk. I don't know if they are claiming each one of these is a single whole yolk, but it's about the right size! If you like custard buns, you may think these are awesome too. It's like custard buns but at the extreme eggy level. I bought these frozen at the Kam Man in the South Bay Shopping Center.

Score: 4/5 - I like custard buns, and these were just like a stronger version of that egg custard flavor.

Red Diamond Hong Kong Style Dim Sum Red Bean A Te Bun

Red bean buns are a favorite of a good friend of mine. The filling in these Red Diamond Hong Kong Style Dim Sum Red Bean A Te Buns is pretty good, smooth and not extremely dry or pasty. The flavor is very mild, just a little sweet. Not so bean-y. The bun size is on the small side, but I think that's the way it goes with the dense, sweet buns. I bought these frozen at the Kam Man in the South Bay Shopping Center.

Score: 3/5 - These are a decent straight red bean bun, nothing exciting.