Furama is a new Dim Sum palace style restaurant in South Philadelphia where dim sum is served from carts that roam the dining room.  I am conflicted about dim sum served from carts.  I enjoy the tension/surprise of spotting a cart across the room that looks good and waiting for it to arrive at my table and then trying to understand what dishes are available, are they sweet or savory, shrimp, chicken or pork?  But often in large restaurants the dishes are cold or luke-warm when they arrive to the table and I don’t enjoy dumplings with cold rice flour dough wrappers. The Sunday morning I was at Furama there were plenty of carts prowling the dining room, with lots of different dishes and all of the ones we picked were still hot when served.     

Furama has a large open dining room with a lot of big round family tables and a few smaller two and four top tables.  One wall is dedicated to a very large flat screen TV which seems to play continuously on a loop and is fairly distracting.

The Dumplings: we focused on the steamed dumplings, including the shrimp and pork shumai, the shrimp and chive dumplings, the shrimp and pea vine dumplings, and shrimp har gow.  Overall the dumplings were all tasty, especially the shrimp and pork shumai, which were large, juicy, sweet and savory.  But all of the dumplings were overcooked and so the rice flour wrappers tended to tear and spill their filling into the steamers or onto our plates.  

The dish with tofu skins wrapped around pork, and some sort of crunchy vegetable, was really good.  The tofu skin had been braised or marinated in a sweet soy sauce, which balanced the slightly fatty and savory pork.  But the standout dish was the salt and pepper baked tiny squid, which were super salty, spicy, crispy and crunchy, and so good.

The Location:Furama recently opened in Wing Phat Plaza, the Vietnamese shopping plaza on Washington Street between 11^th and 12^th street in South Philadelphia.