Houston Dim Sum

Alice Levitt in Gastronaut

I’ve come across several mentions lately of this ‘unheralded’ place - sounds like it should surely be on any Dim Sum Smackdown or Dim Sum Tour, or, uh, Dim Sum Dish of the Month agenda.

Our Dim Sum gathering was at Golden Dim Sum, 10600 Bellaire, about a half mile outside BW8, on the right side of the street headed west, just before Kim Son on the left. I’d never heard of it before and it’s easy to miss, back in the corner of the center with a small street side sign.

It is our host’s favorite place, I’m told. Arriving about 11:20 on a Saturday, it was only about 25% full but filled up by noon and stayed packed with a line of waiting customers at the front of the restaurant. I was told it’s even busier on Sundays. It was more than 90% Asian clientele.

We started wth several dishes to share off the regular Cantonese menu. You order off a menu (displayed on the website); there are no carts. Once the food started arriving, my group went into a boarding house feeding frenzy. This was not a group of foodies taking time to compare the finer points of dumplings and steamed buns, etc., this was a bunch of ravenous animals. I had a blast and will look forward to going again (as well as trying some other dim sum places where the experience may be a bit less frenetic). I was sitting next to the host who did all the orderng and kept shoveling food onto my plate saying ‘You ordered this, eat this.’ I had no idea what some of it was and several things I asked for never appeared.

I thought the pork and shrimp shiu mai was much better than Dim Sum to Go but not the shrimp dumpling. The baked milk custard bun was light years better. I’ve had better versions of the fried turnip cake and steamed bbq pork buns. I was seated in the corner, opposite the point where the servers put the dishes down on the Lazy Susan and missed out on several dishes I wanted to try because they were all gone by the time they got to me including the fried pork dumplings and fried shrimp puff. But I was stuffed and my friend kept shoveling food onto my plate and got a to go box for me.

There was absolutely no time for pictures. Next time, I will just leave the camera at home and be much more aggressive in asking and reaching for what I want. And pick my place at the table more carefully.

We ordered 18 dishes, I think. There were 11 of us and the bill came to $105 and some change. With tax and a 25% + tip, it was $13 a person, a bargain for all that food. We paid cash which gets a 5% discount.

Besides the pictures on the website there are several hundred photos on Yelp!, many uploaded by the owner, and a short video of the interior of the restaurant. Yelp reviews are all over the place, of course.

So when are we going to have a dim sum get-together? Give me a couple of weeks to recover from this one and I’m ready to eat!

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They say on their website that the chef is well known from the SF Bay Area. Any idea who that is and where he/she worked before?

LOL. It is always helpful to space the order out by submitting several separate orders. I go into ‘ravenous animal mode’ when I don’t want to see a steaming hot tray of dimsum getting cold. Then again, its not as much fun if 5 steaming hot trays of dimsum all arrive at the same time.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just puffery but I’ll ask my friend if he knows next time I see him.

I had lunch with my friend today. He said he knows the owner of Golden Dim Sum and has known him for years but doesn’t know the chef. He mentioned he/she was from SF but didn’t know where he had worked (I asked). He did say that would mean he/she was from Hong Kong; as he put it ‘all the Dim Sum chefs in San Francisco are from Hong Kong.’

I asked him about why he goes to Golden Dim Sum. He says he used to move the events around but by general agreement among the participants, they settled on Golden because of quality, consistency and cost.

He says Golden Palace was good 20 years ago but he won’t go there now; he says it has gone way down hill. He says Fung’s is good but inconsistent and pricey. The meal we had at Golden Dim Sum for $13 each, including a generous tip and a 5% cash discount, would have cost about $21 at Fung’s. He takes clients and people he just wants to impress to Fung’s and they love the restaurant but he takes friends he wants to share good Chinese food with to Golden.

I asked him about cart service vs. ordering off a list and he was very emphatic that he prefers ordering off a list. He repeatedly stressed that ‘Chinese people like food hot,’ really stressing hot over and over. Food that is not hot is not that good, he said. At a restaurant with carts, food may come out of the kitchen and it could be 15 minutes before it gets to your table. At a restaurant where you order off a list, food should come directly out of the kitchen to your table and that will be better. The implication was that non-Chinese people don’t value hot food as much.

He says in Hong Kong the old line Dim Sum places still use carts but all the newer places don’t.

And that’s the wisdom of Wah Li regarding dim sum.

I’ve found out he does these get togethers every couple of months not just twice a year so there should be another one coming up in a few weeks. I hope I behaved myself well enough last time to be invited again.

[quote=“brucesw, post:19, topic:2122”]
I asked him about cart service vs. ordering off a list and he was very emphatic that he prefers ordering off a list. He repeatedly stressed that ‘Chinese people like food hot,’ really stressing hot over and over. Food that is not hot is not that good, he said. At a restaurant with carts, food may come out of the kitchen and it could be 15 minutes before it gets to your table. At a restaurant where you order off a list, food should come directly out of the kitchen to your table and that will be better. The implication was that non-Chinese people don’t value hot food as much.[/quote]

Yes this can be sometimes a problem with carts that the steamed food cool down a little. There are four ways around it.

  • If the dining hall is big, get a table near the kitchen entrance where the carts come out.
  • Walk straight up to the carts that just come out of the kitchen with your ticket and get your steamers instead of letting them come to you.
  • Instruct the cart person to get you the steamers stacked in the middle vs the top (where it loses heat quicker)
  • Or, if the steamers they set on your table barely has steam coming out, just tell them to take them back.

There is no fun eating steamed dim sum that aren’t steaming (and off-topic, any type of noodle soup). Fried and baked stuff can arrive warm for me. Btw, all of these are culturally acceptable (and normal) so it is not being pushy.

I personally think that the temperature differences between getting orders from servers versus carts aren’t that big, especially if you don’t have a table in the hinterlands. It takes the server time to drop the steamers off from table to table so food can cool down as well.

There aren’t too many of those in HK that still use carts really.

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Thanks. I figured getting a table near the kitchen would be a good strategy and I appreciate the other tips.

Fung’s is a zoo on weekends! I was actually there last night having some of their spectacular Peking Duck! It too went fast and I barely got one picture.

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I found this list from Kaitlin Steinberg who had a very short tenure as critic at the Press. She mentions Golden Dim Sum and says the chef came over from Golden Palace and brought his recipes and the crowds with him. Doesn’t give a time-frame for the move, though.

Attended another dim sum get together today. A few different people in the mix this time, a few different dishes. Same place - Golden Dim Sum. Packed, people standing in the entryway waiting for a table at 11:25. Thankfully some of our group had arrived early and secured a large table. I had every intention of snapping some quick pics with my phone but it was impossible. Food flew off the lazy susan. I never scored any xiu mai. $15 a person this time.

I’m still up for a dim sum Hodown, although not for a couple of weeks, please! I’d like to have the chance to try the offerings at some other places.

Any takers? I think we need a minimum of 4 people.

Very true, very few dim sum placed use carts in HK it’s now very much the exception and definitely no good places will use a cart.

Interested in the comment about the temperature difference between carts and off the menu ordering. For me it’s a sign of a bad restaurants if the dishes are not freshly cooked to order and served very very quickly…they should be scalding hot when the arrive at the table…too hot to eat.

I do agree baked can be served slightly cooler but pastry should still be crisp but I would have thought good fried dishes need to be served quickly as well as there is nothing worse than a soggy batter.

I cannot disagree with your conclusions. All too often our trips to Ocean Palace, Golden Palace, Kim Son or Fung’s have been marred by the lack of some dish to which I was particularly looking forward. Generally it was something fried or something pork!

Additionally, all too often we have selected some dish, (fried, pork or otherwise) that suffered from having been trundled around a bit too long. Can’t say I’ve often found the batter soggy, but room temperature is definitely not uncommon. Placing an order and having it delivered fresh from chef resolves those issues, BUT…

That said “for me”, the carts, the anticipation, the straining glances at that which is heading our way is an undeniable prime ingredient for the dim sum experience. In this case, it is NOT just about the food. And without the carts, it’s just another dumpling place.

My $0.02.

让我们吃

And the way I described walking up to the cart to get dimsum- I think I will get shoved to the side by grannies and grandpas. See here.

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Although to be fair Lin Heung has pretty average Dim Sum. On my visits I went for the history rather than the food.

Alice Levitt visited Golden Dim Sum for the Press and filed a positive review.

My group has had one other meeting there but I passed on it.

Levitt also recently reported on another of my favorite places for take-out, the Buddhist grocery store and steam table restaurant San San Tofu on Wilcrest and had good things to say about the vegetarian dim sum.

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As I recall, our own fabulous #Jaymes promised to line up a dim sum expert for a HODown sometime after the second weekend in April. We are now there.

Is this to be the weekend?

Unfortunately, my son broke up with his Chinese girlfriend. Drat. She belongs to a big Chinese family and they go to dim sum often. She and my son had said they would be happy to go with us, but now, not so much. She did say that Fung’s Kitchen is their favorite but they usually go to Ocean Palace because it’s a lot cheaper.

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Send her MY number - I’m available!

Oh well, we can still go anyway, right?

And Fung’s is my favorite, but I love Ocean Palace also. My son and I went there at least once a month for years.

And you know…We could do a Dim Sum Crawl and hit a few spots. Straight down Bellaire…

Also, has anyone else ever done the Kim Son hot pot buffet on the weekends? The one we went to is upstairs just a block east of Ocean Palace,. They have two big rooms - dim sum on one side and hot pot on t’other.

Pretty cool setup.

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Doobs - set it up. I’m there. Just not 1st two weeks of May. I’m going to SFO Bay area to see my son & his family.