With parking in Chinatown such a pain, we’ve discovered and come to appreciate Joyful Garden in Watertown. It’s in the Target/Best Buy mall across from Arsenal Yards. Despite the location, it reminds me a bit of our old Chinatown favorite, Hei La Moon. A large, open dining room, filled with mostly large, round tables occupied with Asian families and business men, groups of women getting together, young couples, and a (very) few gringos like my husband and me. You can choose from the meandering carts, or if you haven’t seen something you’ve been craving, you can order from the menu, which is primarily dim sum. Food quality and variety is excellent, prices and experience similar to Chinatown. Lots of parking in front and in back.
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I’m so glad they have survived the whole Covid mess. I was worried for then. We enjoyed them pre Covid a lot and you’re right the parking is so nice and easy. Thanks for posting!!
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Just to make sure everything is cross-referenced (they don’t call me foodabbler-the-wannabe-librarian for nothing), there’s a mention of Joyful Garden upthread and a link to a separate JG thread.
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OOPS! But, it was from Pre-Pandemic times–as was a reference to another sadly closed favorite–Shangri-la. Am I forgiven?
Thankfully, they still seem open (although the location is no longer “new”):
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Got takeout again from Winsor yesterday. Many of our old favorites sang as mellifluously as before: steamed shrimp dumplings, both the version with chives and the one with spinach, the always-superb deep fried shrimp and chive dumplings (got 3 orders, one for each of us, that’s how much we love 'em – but see NOTE below), the steamed chicken buns, and the sticky rice in lotus leaf. The Chau Chow pork dumplings, though, were still filled with lovely, crunchy water chestnuts, peanuts and the like, but the pork was hard to find. [This sort of cost-cutting is now pretty common: The Forage Wine dinners I’ve praised elsewhere are now increasingly low on meat.]
New to us this time were the steamed sticky-rice rolls: a visually curious cylinder of beige sticky rice steamed in a white dough wrapper. But the rice sang (I’m on a musical kick here – just be grateful that I don’t start singing) with flavors: 5 spice, perhaps tiny traces of Sichuan peppercorn, and even tinier flecks of dried pork. It made for quite a chorus in the mouth.
I also got the beef lo mein: thin noodles in a tasty, scalliony sauce, with slices of beef (not the usual strings) with a tenderness far better than they have any right to have in an “ordinary” dish such as this.
Cost for all this: $67 (before tip). We got 3 meals out of it yesterday, and enough left over for two more tonight.
(Comparisons are odious, and all, but Pagu had a rarified dim sum brunch yesterday at $60 a pop, only available initially to AmEx Gold Card members on Resy. Hard to believe that the food would have been any better, at four to five times the cost – but, yes, I understand ambience and the like.)
NOTE: Like all fried things, these fried shrimp&chive triangles are best eaten right away before they are entombed in styrofoam (@digga alert!). But if you must takeout, as I still must, grab the order as soon as it is ready, rush it to your car --parked just outside (I had to circle thrice to get that spot) – find the correct container in the bag, and eat two immediately to capture their full, glorious crisposity (hey, if “crispy” has now become the preferred word over the simpler “crisp”, I make a plea for “crisposity”). Then take the rest home to your wife and daughter. (But, they do re-crisp well on a nonstick griddle.)
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crisptacular?
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Not just that, but very crispocious.
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Agree on Joyful Garden. I found the quality during pandemic better than downtown Ctown. More, recently visited East Ocean in Qunicy and liked it alot. I work near Ctown so I still used it (Great taste is my local favorite).
If you’re in the lowell area, China Star Dim Sum Lounge on Middlesex st by the Rourke Bridge does pretty decent cart dim sum. They have it on weekdays, too.
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Thanks! Will have to give this a try sometime.
They’re open weekdays, too!
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I don’t remember the steamed sticky rice rolls, and I love sticky rice as much as I’m bored by all other kinds of rice. Were they on the dim sum menu or the other menu? Do you have any more information on them?
I mentioned sticky rice in lotus leaf, not “rolls”. This was a tasty version of the old standard – sticky rice enclosing chopped chicken, sausage, etc., and steamed in a lotus leaf wrapper.
But for a new take on this, see my post that immediately follows.
More dim sum taken out from Winsor yesterday, many old favorites mentioned up thread but one outstanding new one. It’s called pan-fried chicken sticky rice and is on the Special Snacks section. This is essentially the sticky-rice encased chicken & sausage filling of the version usually steamed in a lotus leaf wrapper, but flattened here into a patty and griddled till crunchy on both sides then topped with a hard-fried egg. I recommend it highly.
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Prices have kept me away since after the pandemic, but I’ve enjoyed their 蛋煎糯米鸡 (pan fried sticky rice with egg) for many years previously. I had not realized the connection to the lotus leaf wrapped version until now. I like that, but I love the pan fried version.
I guess it must have been someone else talking about a sticky rice roll. Google only found a donut stick wrapped in sticky rice, not whatever the other post was about.
No, you read it right – I was curious about those sticky rice rolls too. But the pan-fried sticky rice sounds even more interesting – I haven’t seen it yet (or maybe i haven’t “seen” it and it’s been there all along, but I usually do a phone order of familiar favorites, dash in, and run out) but will have to explore next time.
These are the things I was and still am curious about.
The pan fried sticky rice has been there since at least 2011, according to the photo on my phone. Phone cameras are better now.
Ah yes, two different posts. The sticky rice rolls were as I describe them in one of the posts.
