I’m writing this from memory – I don’t have any notes from when we stopped in for dim sum at this unassuming Jackson Street establishment a week ago – but the gist of the experience is this: two people stuffed themselves silly and happy for a grand total of $12. I had been meaning to try out the restaurant for a year now – it’s a block from my house and on my walk to work – but somehow hadn’t, perhaps in part due to it’s breakfast and lunch hours and in part due to its uninviting facade (rather typical for the area).

It’s not incredibly hard to find serviceable if not inspiring dim sum in this town, but these places usually follow the “law of dim sum” – namely, everyone coughs up $10 at the end of the meal, unless you are a party of two, in which case each coughs up $12. I’m not clear on exactly how this law is enforced, but I had never been able to break it until this past weekend.

There are other not-the-norm elements of the dining experience – you have to order the food instead of having it carted to you in waves of steamed goods, fried goods, and sweets. Some might find this disappointing – there is definitely something great about being plied with food the minute you sit down. This restaurant is small and volume of customers is low, so I understand the reasoning behind the approach. Plus, I’ll wait five minutes for freshly fried dumplings over instantly delivered stale ones any day.

But back to the food. We had five or six dishes, which included han bows, dumplings, leek pancakes, sweet sticky rice and most importantly, salty soy milk (dou jiang).
While I’m sure it’s easy enough to find this stuff around town, I hadn’t had any since I lived in Taipei for a year and it was what I had for breakfast almost every day. Delicious!

photo by chaoym

For the uninitiated, see what our friends at wikipedia have to say:

“Salty” soy milk is made with a combination of chopped pickled mustard greens (搾菜), dried shrimp and, for curdling, vinegar, garnished with youtiao croutons, chopped scallion (spring onions), cilantro (coriander), meat floss (肉鬆; ròu sōng), or shallot as well as sesame oil, soy sauce, chili oil or salt to taste.

As I said, delicious! Some might be thrown by the purposeful curdling, but once you get by that, it’s easy to see why it’s a breakfast staple. They also have sweet soy milk, which is simply warm soy milk with sweetener. It’s pretty great as well, especially when served with the above mentioned you tiao (for dipping).

So there you go – a really good dim sum option at the corner of Jackson and 20th – a corner that is a fast becoming a prime eating destination with neighbors Hidmo Eritrean and Moonlight Cafe.