![]() ![]() “Most of the women working in big-city restaurants speak only Chinese. “I had a hard time finding women who could serve the food and who speak English,” Chen explained. “We make most everything right after it’s ordered.” Chen uses a checklist approach rather than the traditional dim sum serving method, which involves women driving steaming carts of food offering new morsels constantly. Weekend brunches have become crazy popular. “It’s catching on, and I think a lot of Chinese students are here now. “We said why not, and it just keeps growing,” he said. Chen was born in Taiwan and arrived on this shore via Bolivia and Monterey Park 11 years ago, but dim sum is his big win. “We started it because weekends were so slow all the office people who come for lunch were gone,” said Chen, who owns and loves to cook at his place on the fashionable corner of Anapumu and Chapala. (Dim sum, like mogwai, should not come out at night.) And they are equally good with tea or fine wines, says Peter Suy Chen, who ought to know since he collects California and French wines and brought dim sum to downtown Santa Barbara’s China Pavilion five years ago. They are small and easily devoured: Pluck a flavorful gem from a steaming tray, pop it in your ravioli hole, then follow with many more in any order, elevating the act of ingestion from routine nutritional pursuit to affordable midday feast. The dumplings and buns also include bold flavor enhancers: spices both raw and dried, soy, ginger, chili, and even ground peanut flurries. ![]() One of the great pleasures of inhabiting this planet is the Chinese version of protein-wrapped delectables with a wide array of centers: ground chicken, tofu, gelatinized pork stock, shrimp, and even lobster enveloped in smooth carbs like wonton skins, delicate rice noodles, leavened and steamed dough, and sticky rice. “People love protein wrapped in carbohydrates,” he proclaimed (and I boldly paraphrase), “which explains why people love tacos, ravioli, sandwiches, and dim sum.”Īs usual, my genius offspring is right on both the mega- and the small-plate level. Not long ago, my son Zac floated a theory about food. ![]()
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