Dim sum after a night of drinking too much and dancing at a Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ show has become a tradition.  This summer I hit the show in Philadelphia and luckily Philly has a Chinatown.  It is centered around Vine and Arch streets downtown and has been around since the 1870’s.  We picked Ocean City Restaurant solely based on the fact that it opens at 10 am, early enough that we could eat and make our flights home.  Ocean City Restaurant is an old school dim sum palace, with big round tables and carts that are pushed around the restaurant that you choose small plates and steamer baskets from.

The Dumplings:  We got to the restaurant just as it opened and we were the only diners there for most of our breakfast.  It was pretty clear the kitchen was not yet going full force and there were only three carts prowling around the restaurant floor.  The steamed Shrimp Har Gow were on the first cart that came by and we grabbed them.  The shrimp were really sweet and tasted fresh but the rice flower wrappers around the dumplings were floppy and did not hold the shrimp together in a bundle very well.

The other two dumpling options available that early in service were the Shrimp Shumai and the Pork and Shrimp Shumai.  The Shumai at Ocean City are quite big, two to three bites each and the Shrimp ones were the better of the two.  Once again the shrimp were fresh and really sweet and because they were coarsely chopped they had a good crunch/pop when I bit into them.  The Pork and Shrimp ones were tasty but had glued together in the steamer so it was tough to pry them out in one piece.  Basically I had to deconstruct them to get them onto my plate.

The Location:  Ocean City Restaurant is on North 9th Street between Race  and Vine streets, at the edge of Chinatown.  It is a pretty desolate location, across from a parking lot and a stones throw from Highway 676.