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.