D is for Dim S

The fourth cuisine club was a little different from the previous ones as it was not a cuisine by itself, but a part of various food fares that China has to offer. 'D' was for Dim Sum and I (Karan), chose the place. Being in NYC, and being a traditional type of food, I chose the traditional neighborhood of Chinatown. After researching on the internet, I finally decided to go with Jing Fong. Not only did it sound traditional and very Dim Summy but it had great reviews too.

We decided to do lunch instead of dinner as Dim Sum's were prepared fresh only in the afternoon and there was much more variety to choose from. The only bad thing was that many people landed up dropping out due to the change. We got there around 2 pm and were 9 people in all. We were seated pretty quick as the place was huge (almost a whole NYC block!) and we came in at the tail end of rush hour. Right off the bat we were hit with ladies pushing carts offering us various kinds of Dim Sums and if you know me well enough, I did not say NO for anything!

We had a slight issue in the first 5 minutes as we had 2 people who were vegetarian with us and none of the Dim Sums being offered were veg. We tried ordering from the menu but were told by the person waiting on us (with all the Chinese courtesy possible, which is none!) that we could not order from the menu anymore. But after talking/explaining to someone who seemed higher in ranks than the person waiting on us, they finally decided to take orders from the menu for our vegetarian friends.

Once that ordeal was over, we dug into some shrimp, mixed seafood, pork, beef and whatever else that was steamed or fried and was served to us. They gave us very little soy and a lot of hot sauce to have with the dumplings. We also got the chicken fried rice and some other kind of sticky rice. Most of the dumplings we had were great and the ones that were not so great were only so as they were cold. We tried our best to talk to the ladies serving from the cart to get some hot fresh food, but due to language barriers could not communicate with them. We all decided next time around when we come to a dim sum place again, we need to know some key words in Chinese in order to make it a better experience. Some of those words would be Hot, Cold, Yes, No, Fast, Fish, Pork, Seafood etc. The vegetarian food also was quite good but was in huge quantities!

Since there was not much Alcohol involved, it was not along lunch. We wrapped up pretty quick and then there is only so much Dim Sum you can eat! Next time around one should go before 1 pm and one would possibly get more variety too! We spent the next couple hours in Chinatown imitating some Chinese accents and eating ice cream pedas! All in all was a great lunch and I look forward to E!