Furama, Philadelphia, PA

Posted on December 1, 2024 by rundlea

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 11th and 12th street in South Philadelphia.

Posted in Bao, Chinese, Chive, Crystal Shrimp, Dim Sum, Pea vine, Philadelphia, Pork, Shrimp, Shumai, Steamed | Leave a comment

Quick Reviews: London, Edinburgh and Glasgow

Posted on October 8, 2024 by rundlea

Itadakizen London. Near King’s Cross St. Pancras train station, Itadakizen is a plant based Japanese restaurant that serves deep fried vegan gyoza. The gyoza were excellent as was the Goma-Q, the vegan Karage and the Shoyu Ramen. I recommend this place.

The Pasty Shop, at King’s Cross Station. Forget going to the tourist trap of platform 9 and 3/4, waiting on line for a photo with the luggage trolley embedded in the wall and the Harry Potter Shop, instead turn around 180 degrees and go to the Pasty Shop. They have the traditional Cornish Pasty and some not so traditional varieties, and a vegan pasty and a vegan sausage roll. As you can see the warm orange lights they use in the display cabinet make the pastys look more golden than they really are, but they are quite tasty.

Soul Vegan, Edinburgh, Scotland. In the university district around Edinburgh University you can find Soul Vegan which serves South East Asian vegan food. Overall we were a little disappointed by the food, but the pan-fried to seared vegan dumplings were quite good, but a little heavy on the blackened/charred flavor. Sen Viet (Vietnamese) and Sora Lella (Roman/Italian) were much better options for vegan food. Sora Lella was so good we ate there two nights in a row.

Sainsbury’s Melton Mowbray Pork Pie. This classic English mini-pork pie was a delicious calorie bomb. A single mini-pie is meant to serve two!!, at 256 kcal, and 17.6g of fat (25% of recommended daily allowance) per serving (1/2 a pie). This is a dumpling the same way a pasty is a dumpling. Available at every Sainsbury’s I have ever gone to.

St. Bernard’s Bar, Stockbridge Edinburgh, of the many Scottish pubs I tried in Edinburgh this was the best. This is a small pub decorated in an endless array of antiques, or quasi-antiques, with a proprietor sporting old timey mutton chops and suspenders. The ground floor is so small that when he seats, you the proprietor will let you know that you may be sharing a table with another party. When I visited he was giving everyone free tastes of a Belgium Ale called Pauwel Kwak, and like any good dealer, only the first taste is free. The Kwak was excellent and is served in a special 10 ounce, bulb shaped glass. St. Bernard’s is dog friendly.

Namu Korean Kitchen, Glasgow. Namu Korean Kitchen served up some of the best Korean food we have had in a while, with lots of vegan options. The service can be slow, but the food is worth the wait. I think they use frozen dumplings, but if so, their dumpling sommelier chose an excellent veggie dumpling for the restaurant to serve. Very good dumplings served with a very tasty dipping sauce.

Posted in Korean, Pan Fried, Pasty, Pork, Travel, Vegan, Vegetarian, Veggie Dumplings | Leave a comment

Ray’s Café and Tea House, Philadelphia, PA

Posted on September 28, 2024 by rundlea

Ray’s Café and Tea House is a family run Taiwanese café that introduced siphon coffee brewing to Philadelphia and serves some great house made dumplings.  Ray’s is a small place that sells drinks and food and ground coffee and packages of tea and has table seating for about a dozen customers.  Their siphon brewing rig has multiple glass chambers that hold water and coffee grounds and as the water is heated it moves into the chamber that has the coffee grounds and brews.  Ray’s also has a machine to make ice coffee that adds room temperature water very slowly, one drip per second, to the grounds and takes 12 hours to brew a cup of coffee. 

The Dumplings:  Ray’s has a pretty extensive menu of Taiwanese food and American-Chinese dishes.  Their home made, pan-fried dumpling menu includes; pork & napa, pork & leek, vegetable, and chicken curry dumplings, leek boxes and a sampler plate.   I got an order of pork & napa dumplings and an order of the vegetable dumplings.  The dumplings are very large, which explains why the waiter looked at me funny and asked if I was sure when I asked for two orders.  A single order of dumplings would make a filling lunch.  The pork & napa dumplings were delicious, savory, well-seasoned and juicy and the wrappers were nicely pan-fried seared on the bottom.  In contrast the vegetable dumplings were bland and uninspired and I would have been disappointed if I had just ordered these dumplings.  Luckily I was stuffed after eating the order of pork and napa dumplings.

There is an interview with the owner in a 2007 issue of Gastronomica in which she laments that people do not buy enough of her dumplings.  She quoted as saying “I hope that someday I’ll sell so many that my pot will boil continuously, and my chef and kitchen helper will be able just to stand there and make dumplings to order.”  Hopefully this blog post will help her achieve that goal.  Go to Ray’s Café and buy some pork dumplings.

The Location:  Ray’s is located on the Eastern edge of Philadelphia’s Chinatown, on North 9th street between Cherry and Race streets. 

The Philadelphia 76ers basketball team is trying to build a new arena in Chinatown, a move that is seen as threatening to the continued existence of the neighborhood.  There has been a groundswell of opposition to building the arena, but Mayor Parker just announced an agreement with the 76ers to build it.  The project now needs City Counsel approval to move forward.  There is a long history of arenas being build and displacing communities and I am hoping the Counsel rejects the plan.   

   

Posted in Chinese, Pan Fried, Philadelphia, Pork, Potsticker, Vegetarian, Veggie Dumplings | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Stargazy, Philadelphia, PA

Posted on September 3, 2024 by rundlea

Philadelphia’s Stargazy is styled as a classic east London pie and mash shop, and totally hits this mark, even down to the green parsley liquor sauce on the mash.  It is a small store front shop with counter service and 3 or 4 tables.  In addition to pie and mash, Stargazy sells Scotch Eggs, sausage rolls, Shepard’s pie, pasties and Bedfordshire Clanger (aka Trowley Dumpling).  On Fridays they have Fish and Chips, on Saturdays a Full English Breakfast and on Sundays they have a full Roast Dinner.  They also sell a small selection of imported English groceries and soda’s.  Unfortunately in my experiences going there, the east London classic, jellied eels, have not been available.

The Dumplings:   I have argued previously that pasties are a form of dumpling, and Stargazy offers a variety of pasty options including; the Classic Cornish, cheese and onion, the Priddy Oggy, Potato Masala and a Cheesesteak style.  On my latest visit I tried the Potato Masala pasty, which was essentially a vegetable samosa in a pasty format and baked rather than fried.  The pasty wrapper was buttery and flaky and the filling consisted of curry flavored potato, onion and peas.  This pasty was delicious and filling, and I am planning to work my way through the rest of their pasty styles. 

The Location:  Stargazy is at 1838 East Passyunk Ave in South Philly, just north of Miflin Street and next to Big Catch, which I have reviewed previously. East Passyunk is one of Philadelphia’s major commercial and entertainment corridors and a great place to bar hop and go out to eat.

Posted in Pasty, Philadelphia, Vegetarian, Veggie Dumplings | Leave a comment

Ramen Kuraku, New York, NY

Posted on August 17, 2024 by rundlea

Ramen Kuraku opened during the pandemic in a Columbia University building neat the 168th street medical center, making it one of the northern most ramen restaurants in Manhattan.  The restaurant offers shio black, miso and shoyu ramen broths, served spicy and non-spicy, with pork or chicken toppings.  They also serve curry ramen and abura soba, which is warm no soup ramen.  I have tried the shio black pork tonkatsu ramen, non-spicy, twice now and both times it was quite good.  They also have a variety of rice bowls and serve beer. 

The dumplings: Ramen Kuraku sells Takoyaki and a variety of dumplings: pork gyoza, chicken gyoza, ebi shrimp gyoza, Ika squid gyoza; and tofu vegetable gyoza. They are served steamed or pan-fried and the pan-fried versions come spicy and non-spicy.   While I have enjoyed the ramen, the dumplings I tried at Ramen Kuraku were disappointing.  The pan-fried gyoza needed more time on the pan, the bottoms of the gyoza were not crispy or charred enough, and the filling tasted a little metallic. The Takoyaki were not spherical and were flat on one side so that each one looked like half a takoyaki.  This shape is a sign that the restaurant is using frozen Takoyaki and they are probably throwing them in the fryer to heat them up and re-crisp them.  Takoyaki should be served blazing hot with lots of toppings, but the ones I got at Ramen Kuraku were not hot enough and needed more toppings. 

The Location:  Ramen Kuraku is located on Broadway between 165th and 166th streets, in the Washington Heights neighborhood.  It is near the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center 168th street A/C/1 subway stop.     

Posted in Gyoza, Japanese, New York City, Pork, Potsticker, Takoyaki | Leave a comment

Dim Sum Bloom, (ne Shun Lee Cafe, and Shun Lee 98th), New York, NY

Posted on June 23, 2024 by rundlea

The food at Upper West Side’s Dim Sum Bloom was meh when I ate there, but the back story of the restaurant is interesting.  It originally opened, to great anticipation, as “Shun Lee Cafe” and then later changed its name to “Shun Lee 98th St”.  The opening announcement was greeted with joy by Upper West Siders, who though they were getting an outpost of the beloved Shun Lee restaurants (Shun Lee Palace on East 55th and Shun Lee West on west 65th). But the menu at Shun Lee Café/98th didn’t include any of the Shun Lee classics and the food was not nearly up to the quality of the OG Shun Lee’s.

It turns out that during the height of the pandemic an accountant working for the real Shun Lee had pitched the restaurant’s owners on opening a more casual dining version of the classic Shun Lee.  Apparently, the owner of Shun Lee initially bought into the concept and partnered up with the accountant, but then decided to back out of the arrangement and sold his ownership stake to the accountant.  But Shun Lee inexplicably agreed to license their name to the new venture, causing much confusion on the Upper West Side.  In the wake of customer confusion and disappointment, even though they apparently had a legitimate right to the name, the owners of Shun Lee Café/98th decide to change the restaurant’s name to Dim Sum Bloom.

The Dumplings:  As its name suggests, Dim Sum Bloom has a large dim sum menu with a lot of dumplings options.  We tried the Pork Soup Dumplings, the Pork and Shrimp Shumai, the Duck Dumplings, the Fried Fish Wontons, and the Honey Roast Pork Buns.  Overall, the dumplings were competently executed but were not great, and with so many excellent options for dumplings on the Upper West Side, a Dim Sum restaurant needs to be more than competent to be worth eating at.  The Fried Fisk Wontons were the one standout of the meal, and if I was dragged back to the restaurant I would order them again.  The wontons were filled with white fish, that had a mild, sweet fish flavor without being fishy, and were near perfectly pan-fried.   But with Moon Kee two blocks north, Happy Hot Hunan a few blocks further up on Amsterdam Ave and the newly opened Na Xiang Express on Broadway and 107th, there are some great dumpling options that I’ll go to instead of Dim Sum Bloom.

The Location: Dim Sum Bloom is on the corner of 98th street and Broadway in Manhattan’s Upper West Side neighborhood.    

Posted in Bao, Buns, Chinese, Dim Sum, Duck, Fish, New York City, Pan Fried, Pork, Soup Dumpling, Xiao Long Bao | Leave a comment

Moon Kee, New York, NY

Posted on May 30, 2024 by rundlea

Moon Kee opened back in October of 2023 selling Cantonese style food and dim sum.  The restaurant traces its origins to the owner’s father, who learned to cook in China in the 1950s and after moving to Hong Kong in the 1960’s, ran a street food stall.  These stalls played a quintessential part of Hong Kong’s food scene in the 1950s and 60s. The menu comes as a book of large plate dishes that include a smattering of American Chinese offerings and a large laminated card that lists the dim sum.  The owner claims that all of the dim sum are made in-house and they never use frozen food.  The steamed rice with Chinese sausage wrapped in a Lotus leaf was delicious. The rice had a mild tea like flavor from the leaf wrapper, with a slight pork flavor from the Chinese sausage and pork embedded in the rice. 

The Dumplings:  The dim sum menu has a lot of dumplings and rice rolls, with four dumplings in each order.  We got the pork soup dumplings, the pork and shrimp shumai, steamed pork and shrimp chive buns, and pan-fried pork dumplings.  The best of the bunch was the chive buns, which have a rice flour wrapper and a delicious chive flavor, think very mild onions with a touch of garlic and grassy herbal notes, in which I could just taste the sweet and savory flavors of the shrimp and pork. The weakest dish was the shumai.  They may have been overcooked, but the wrapper was too thin to hold the pork, shrimp mushroom together. They tasted good, but did not eat well.  The soup dumplings were quite good, sporting wrappers that kept their integrity and contained about a table spoon of tasty, fatty pork soup.  I thought the wrapper on the pan-fried pork dumplings were a little thick, and would have benefited from a stronger browning or charring.  But they were tasty and quite juicy.   

The Location:  Moon Kee is on Broadway between 100 and 101st, in Mahattan’s Upper West Side neighborhood.  You can reach it via the express 2/3 at 96th street or the local 1 train at 96th or 103rd streets.

Posted in Buns, Chinese, Chive, Dim Sum, New York City, Pan Fried, Pork, Shrimp, Shumai, Soup Dumpling, Steamed, Sticky Rice, Xiao Long Bao | Leave a comment

3 Times, New York, NY

Posted on March 26, 2024 by rundlea

The origin story of 3 Times, a local NYC mini-chain of dumpling joints, is that an expat from Nanjing who was working as a tour guide in New York wanted a good Chinese restaurant to take his groups to. He had noticed the popularity of Din Tai Fung in other U.S. cities and wanted to adopt their ethos for quality for his own Shanghai-ese restaurant.  The origin story was not complete until he convinced a retired chef with 40 years of experience in Chinese restaurants in Shanghai and New York City to join him in the venture. 3 Times now seems to have about half-a-dozen locations in NYC. The one I tried on Amsterdam Ave was tiny, with counter service and maybe four tables, and was doing a steady stream of take-out business.

The Dumplings:  3 Times sells Pork Xiao Long Bao, Pork and Crab Xiao Long Bao and Chicken Xiao Long Bao and a variety of other dumplings including two of my favorites, the Shanghai style sticky rice with pork shumai and the pan-fried pork buns (Sheng Jian Bao).  The filling for Shanghai style sticky rice with pork shumai reminds me of Southern style dirty rice, mixed with pork and flecks of Chinese Sausage. These shumai are usually a flavorful bite, full of umami and sweet and sour notes from the sausage.  Unfortunately, the shumai at 3 Times had no flavor, I mean none, to the point where I thought I might have contracted COVID and lost my sense of taste.  I slurped down some of the soy dipping sauce just to convince myself my taste buds were intact and not virus ridden. Thankfully the pan-fired pork buns were much better, with great pork flavor, sweetness from the top of the bun and burnt caramelization from the crispy bottoms of the bun.  Unlike the pan-fried buns served at a lot of places, in proper Shanghai style the ones at 3 Times each contained a spoon full of soup. 

The Location:  3 Times’ Upper West Side location, on the west side of Amsterdam Ave between 107th and 108th street, is tiny and easy to miss.  It is near other Dumpling Hunter favs,  Happy Hot Hunan, Grain House and Naruto Ramen.          

Posted in Bao, Buns, Chinese, New York City, Shanghai, Sheng Jian Bao, Shumai | Leave a comment

Ba Le Bakery, Philadelphia, PA

Posted on March 3, 2024 by rundlea

There seem to be several Ba Le Bakery stores around the U.S. – California, Dorchester, Falls Church, Chicago and the one I hit in Philadelphia.  It is unclear whether they are related to one another.  The website for the Ba Le in Chicago suggests that there are many imitators of what they claim to be the original Ba Le Bakery. 

Philadelphia’s Ba Le Bakery sells a huge variety of prepared foods and a wide range of to-order Banh Mi sandwiches out of a jam packed, narrow space in a Vietnamese shopping plaza.  They have a variety of summer rolls, multiple types of sausage, ham products, pates, shrimp paste loafs, Vietnamese Beignets (which are vegan), bottled sauces, rice noodle rolls, pickles, deserts and bread rolls for sale.  They bake their Banh Mi rolls in house and their rolls some of the best in the neighborhood, which has close to a dozen places where you can buy Banh Mi.  They also carry vegan bologna and vegan pate so you could buy ingredients to make a vegan Banh Mi. They have no seating so everything is to-go.

The Dumplings: The Ba Le Bakery web site lists eleven kinds of dumplings, including several desert dumplings and Banh Gio, which are pyramid shaped rice flour dumplings stuffed with pork and wrapped in green banana leaves.  For this review I tried their steamed pork buns.  As usual for Vietnamese steamed buns these were fist sized buns made of fluffy, slightly sweet, bread stuffed with seasoned pork, a quail egg and Chinese sausage, with the unusual addition of peas and carrots.  The bun was really tasty, with the usual sweet and savory counter points from the bun bread and the pork, but I did not really notice the carrots and peas adding much to the flavor.  There wasn’t much Chinese sausage in the bun and I think it needed more to bring the slightly sour and spicy notes that make Vietnamese steamed buns flavor symphonies. A really good steamed bun, but not as good as those sold at BB Tee House.

The Location:  Philadelphia has a Little Saigon neighborhood that is centered on Washington Ave and runs from 6th street to 12th street and is anchored with shopping plaza’s on either end of the strip.  There is also a handful of restaurants and cafes that run north on 8th street from Washington Ave.  Ba Le Bakery is in the New World Plaza on 6th street and Washington Ave., which has several other foodie destinations including: an old school Dim Sum palace, a Paris Baguette and a Chinese supermarket.   

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Posted in Bao, Bao Battle, Philadelphia, Pork, Steamed, Vietnamese | Leave a comment

BB Tee House, Philadelphia PA

Posted on February 23, 2024 by rundlea

BB Tee House is a new Vietnamese café in South Philly specializing in bubble tea and Banh Mi sandwiches. They also sell Vietnamese coffee, prepared foods, frozen foods and Vietnamese pantry staples.  They have excellent Banh Mi sandwiches and Bao and really good summer rolls.  On any given day they have 4-5 varieties of summer roll, my current top pick contains Chinese sausage and omelet.    

The Dumplings:  BB Tee sells baked BBQ pork buns (Char Siu Bao) and steamed pork buns (Banh Bao).  The Char Siu Bao are flat slightly sweet, fluffy buns, about 4 inches across, and are packed with juicy sweet BBQ pork.  The buns are good, but between the sweetness of the BBQ sauce and of the bun, they are a little one note.  On the other hand the steamed pork buns are sensational, probably the best I have eaten (sorry Tran’s World Food Market). These fist size buns are filled with seasoned ground pork, a whole Quail egg and Chinese sausage, all contained in slightly sweet fluffy bun.  The sausage is hard and slightly chewy and is salty and sweet with some soy notes, while the ground pork has a mild, savory taste and then there is a whole boiled egg.  These buns are large and one bun is sufficient for a solid lunch.         

Banh Bao
Char Siu Bao
Banh Bao, on a plate by Dumpling Hunter

The Location:  BB Tee is located in Wing Phat Plaza on Washington Avenue between 11th and 12th street in South Philly.  Wing Phat Plaza is a shopping plaza anchored by a large Vietnamese supermarket, that has several Vietnamese restaurants (one of the highest rated Pho restaurants in Philly), a Dim Sum restaurant and an excellent Indonesian restaurant.     

Posted in Bao, Bao Battle, Philadelphia, Pork | Leave a comment