schnitzle "Food is Love"

We tried T&T Seafood for the first time tonight, on the eve of the Lunar New Year. Of course the place was PACKED! A good sign in my book. We had to wait a bit, but were seated very promptly once a table opened. Our waitress came to take our order very quickly, and we had no problem with communication, unlike the previous reviewer. I thought that the menu offered a very good selection. I only wish that we had a larger party so we could have tried more dishes.

While we didn’t get stellar service, when we asked for things they appeared quickly. It was a crazy busy night, so I am not going to judge the service at this time.

TopGun used to be our favorite place for dim sum in the ID, but since they’ve moved we haven’t really known where to go. We decided to try Jade Garden after hearing about it here and on ChowHound. We were daunted by the the large groups of people waiting outside (Memorial Day, what was I thinking?!) but found a place to park and went in anyway. SO PACKED! The hostess told us the wait would be 45 minutes for a two top. We decided to stick it out. I mean, I really wanted to try this place!

Once we were seated, tea and ice water arrived and once we received first plate of shrimp chee cheong fun, the wait was forgotten. It’s nice that you get to select which tea you want. I boringly chose jasmine because I wasn’t that familiar with the others. We were really close to the kitchen which probably helped because we saw the new stuff coming out. Even though everyone was busy as hell running here and there, and I do mean RUNNING, I thought the service was friendly and attentive.

We had…

• Shrimp chee cheong fun

• Shrimp and seaweed in a light pastry.

• BBQ Pork filled pastries (not bao. So flaky and yum!)

• Zha Leong, fried dough in rice noodle. This was our favorite!

• Sticky rice. So full of goodies!

• Har gau.

• Shrimp and chive sesame pan-fried dumplings.

There were so many other things we wanted to try, The lobster dumplings looked really good, for one! Unfortunately, a person can only eat so much :P We didn’t have any dessert because the egg tarts are mini which means too much crust-to-egg ratio. They were also out of custard buns. No problem! Mon Hei Bakery is just down the street!

I have been to HoH a few times for dim sum and it’s weird how inconsistant they can be!

If you go early-ish, say around 11 then you get a lot of your normal dim sum goodies like sticky rice in lotus leaf, ha gau, ha cheong fen, egg tarts etc. It’s not super killer terrific or anything, but it’s good and the prices are ok.

Now supposedly they serve dim sum until 4, but really they serve SOME dim sum until 4. I understand that it would be expensive and pointless to have every item available from opening until 4 pm. When we went at 3 we got some good things, but were told by the waiter that if we came earlier we could have gotten more selection and things would have been fresher. Well, at least he told us :)
They should really cut down their dim sum hours to cut down on dissapointed diners.

My worst experience here was when a club I belong to decided to hold a 1pm lunch here. I’m sure the reason was the size of the place and the available parking, not the food. Anyway, we ended up with only 6 people instead of the 10 who RSVP’d. Not too terrible. However we were almost ignored by most of the carts (strange because there was another large table near us) and were only offered fried items. We lucked out that a Cantonese speaking club member was able to get us some shrimp dumplings, other than that it was just fried-ville for us. I guess they had stopped making steamed things? By 2pm we basically gave up on getting anything much to eat and left. It was a very strange situation. Unfortunately it was also 3 of the people’s first experience with dim sum. I hope they will give it another try.

The food is good (not great, fabulous or wonderful) if you can get it. Definitely worth it when you don’t feel like waiting an hour to get in at Jade Garden.

-1 stars really ;) The best thing about Ying’s drive in is their cool retro signage.

THE worst Chinese food, and quite possibly the worst food food I have ever EVER had! This place serves what my friend refers to as a “Giant tasteless” ie. lots of really bland bad goop.

It was so bad that I (maliciously) told a couple of people we should go there just to exclaim “Isn’t it horrible!?!!” to them when they asked me WTF XD