perrik

MD locations... along with the two already mentioned, try Han Ah Reum and Korean Korner in Wheaton, and Lotte in Wheaton or Rockville.

Hollywood East On The Boulevard is open until 1am Sunday-Thursday and 2am Friday-Saturday. Don't know why I keep forgetting this is an option, especially since my +1 gets home from work around 10pm and has usually forgotten to eat dinner. I wonder if he'd be in the mood for Chinese food tonight...

Have you gone Canadian on us? (hey, that's an idea... dim sum road trip to Toronto!) That was Shanghai Cafe, our scheduled visit to which was sidetracked by one of this winter's rare ice/snow events. Now that the risk of frost is low, we'll have to give it another try.

Lucky Three 5900 Leesburg Pike (just west of Bailey's Crossroads) Falls Church, VA Sunday, 23 April at noon Who is planning to attend? I will not be there, alas... New Fortune details to be announced a bit later - it will be sometime in the second half of May. That means we'll look into hitting HEOTB again in early or mid June. It's not technically dim sum, but I'm willing to loosen up on the technicalities... would anyone be interested in a weekend lunch visit to A&J in Rockville?

Reminder time... Next Saturday (15 April), we will meet at Hollywood East On The Boulevard at noon. We shall be paying special attention to the dessert cart and savory pastries. Current attendee list: me +1, Dean +1, porcupine +1, and Scott. 23 April: Lucky Three in Falls Church. Did we settle on a time? Unfortunately I am unlikely to attend. We shall need a full report - LT is owned by the NF folks, so let's hope for good things... Here's a tentative date for New Fortune: Saturday 6 May at noon. Does this work for enough people? I'd like to do NF on a Saturday so my +1 can attend. We can move this a week in either direction, if that's better for the majority. At some point I'd like to schedule second visits to Oriental East and Fortune/Falls Church. I suspect the Comparo Team didn't see those kitchens at their best, and want to give them another chance. No rush, though. EDIT: Changed tentative NF date from 13 May to 6 May.

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Would the NoVa crowd prefer to sample Lucky Three on the 22nd, 23rd, 29th, or 30th? My own preference is the 29th, with either Sunday also good. We've got afternoon Tai Shan viewing tickets plus an evening concert on the 21st, so I'd fall asleep on top of the sui mei if we do this on the 22nd. The 15 April excursion to HEOTB is now categorized as an on-a-whim announcement... Porcupine and I will be there at noon with our +1s, and we welcome anyone who wishes to join us for dim sum. No worries, we will do an "official" Dim Sundays gathering there very soon. I'm thinking late May, with a New Fortune visit in early May. (Daniel, how does your May calendar look?) I still haven't dug up any other NoVa restaurants that offer dim sum, so Lucky Three is the last "new" contestant. I would like to give the Falls Church Fortune another try at some point, to see if we just hit it on an off day. No hurry, though. Navigating the Seven Corners area sucks ventworm nuts...

I've never been tempted to buy produce at the market (not when Han Ah Reum is reasonably close by) but the pork and poultry are reliably good. And yes, the milk and cream..! Also keep an eye out for good birch beer on tap. I had co-workers in North Bethesda who would make lunch runs to the Burtonsville market specifically for those ribs. Historical note: the market took over that space after the Chesapeake Bay Seafood House closed. Big improvement.

The board suddenly won't let me edit my posts. Odd. Anyway, we're aware of the limitations of the HEOTB date, but it's one of the few weekends porcupine will have free in the near future. We will schedule another visit there soon at a more generally convenient date in late May or June, after the New Fortune visit. Daniel, what's a good date for you for Jesse Wong's?

Sorry it's such a muddle, but you've got it right: Hollywood East On The Boulevard: 15 April Lucky Three: 22 or 23 April (it's actually in Falls Church, on Rt 7) Jesse Wong's Hong Kong: no date proposed New Fortune: no date proposed These will be first-time visits to Lucky Three and Jesse Wong's, and repeat visits for HEOTB and NF.

Oops, wrong calendar! I meant Saturday the 22nd. <hurriedly edits the previous post for THIS year's dates> We could do the 23rd, though, if this is the will of the critical mass. My +1 can only attend on Saturdays, but Sundays are generally fine for me.

Wow, I missed some of those cold items (I never got around to trying those particular dishes, lucky me). I think New Fortune's version of salty & pepper shrimp is better, or at least it was on visits prior to the first DR-related visit when all the shrimp dishes were mushy. We'll have to see if NF has solved their shrimp thawing problems yet. And I like my cuttlefish fishy. Right now, I'd rank MDH third behind Hollywood East On The Boulevard and New Fortune. Of the three we've tried in NoVa, MDH is by far the best (although I'd still like to give Fortune another chance).

The giant oysters were available, but we couldn't figure out how to split them amongst the party. Maybe we'll go back and sample all the pricier weekend specialties like the oysters and the lobster dumplings. Welcome to DR, Geling! I wonder if you hit the place on a bad day, or if they've improved their offerings since then. I think dim sum places have been increasing the variety of dishes in recent years - the dim sum we had at New Fortune recently definitely seemed more varied than what was available when I first tried it five or six years ago. Good point about Peking vs Cantonese duck. Oddly enough, I ate mostly Cantonese-style duck when living in California, and loved it. Maybe I'm getting less grease-tolerant in my old age. Perhaps you'll join us when we try MDH again? We'll probably schedule another visit later this spring - keep an eye on the Some Dim Sundays thread. Scott wisely made a reservation for us, and they held a large table for our group.

I started a new thread for Mark's Duck House discussion. Mmmm, that was good. Lucky Three is next on the NoVa list, and it may be the last one on the list unless we missed some possibilities. Considering our experience at the Falls Church Fortune (disappointing - cold dishes, inconsistent quality), it's hard to work up the enthusiasm to try the Reston version. The Maryland crew is considering trying out Jesse Wong's Hong Kong at Columbia's waterfront. How many people are willing to venture that far north? I live in northern Silver Spring, so Columbia is much closer than Falls Church - so yeah, I'm in. We haven't set a firm date for Lucky Three, though. Does Saturday, 23 April at noon sound acceptable to everyone? Meanwhile, we will visit HEOTB on 15 April, which is the Saturday before Easter. (Edit: date corrected) We're going to consider this date firm because of prior commitments on other weekend - don't worry if you can't make it, we'll schedule yet another HEOTB visit soon enough! Meanwhile, I'm thinking early May for another New Fortune feast. We'll figure that out a bit later. If anyone digs up any worthwhile NoVa dim sum places to try, please post the info!

Nine hungry Rockwellian dim sum addicts descended upon Mark's Duck House at noon today. After disappointments at our two previous NoVa outings (China Garden in Rosslyn and Fortune across the street from MDH), we were delighted at the consistently good tidbits pouring out of this kitchen. Our feast consisted of the following: scallop dumplings roast suckling pig baked roast pork croissant (flaky triangular pastry filled with char sui) sui mei har gow shrimp cheong fan roast duck BBQ spareribs spareribs in black bean sauce tripe with ginger shrimp in seaweed shrimp/taro cakes baby cuttlefish clams in black bean sauce braised chicken feet sticky rice in lotus leaf potstickers salt & pepper head-on shrimp Chinese broccoli baked char sui bao stuffed bean curd skin tofu with some unspecified roast meat on top some sort of fried shrimp dumpling with a shrimp tail for decoration fried roll with shrimp and fake crab pineapple buns custard tarts sesame seed balls There might have been another dish or two in there as well. There were a few misses here and there, but the quibbles were minor - overall, the quality was consistently good. Service was outstanding compared to other dim sum places. My minor quibbles... The tea was much weaker than its color would have indicated. Perhaps the leaves were a bit stale? Sesame balls are usually filled with red bean paste, but MDH used something we couldn't quite identify. I think shredded coconut was a component. It wasn't really creamy or flavorful, and the balls themselves were loaded with oil. Not horrible by any means, as it still tasted nice enough, but it was not at the same level of quality as the rest of the offerings. The cheong fan sauce wasn't as rich as one normally finds - it was more like lightly sweetened soy sauce. I was surprised that the roast duck was the weakest meat platter we got at a place called Mark's Duck House. The fat wasn't fully rendered, so the skin was a little too limp and the meat a little too greasy. OTOH, the roast suckling pig had wonderfully crisp skin, and the BBQ spareribs were a major highlight of the meal. For me, the best dishes were the BBQ spareribs, the clams in black bean sauce (oh dear, did I really end up eating half the platter?), and the baby cuttlefish. Oh, and the triangular char sui pastry - I think Hollywood East On The Boulevard's version is a touch better, but it's a close call. (MDH had better pastry, HEOTB had better char sui) The restaurant is quite small for a dim sum crowd - I can't imagine it seating more than 150 people. Must be a heck of a wait on Sundays. Unlike, say, China Garden, MDH seems worth the wait. Cost per adult: $18 including a generous tip

Add a +1 for me, which brings us up to 8 so far.

Hang on a tic... Giant is making their own doughnuts again? I was not pleased when they shut down their bakeries and polluted their stores with those Krispy Kremes drowning in a sugary glop. Sigh. Giant used to make an airy, eggy cruller with just a dusting of powdered sugar or a drizzle of chocolate glaze. Yum.

I'll throw out a tentative date for New Fortune - 22 April at noon. If Sunday the 23rd is better for the critical mass we can do that instead, but my +1 would like to attend and he works on Sundays. The dim sum gallery on the MDH website is making me drool all over the keyboard. Please oh please let them have the baby bok choy on the carts that day... (and maybe their dim sum will actually be warm, what a concept)

April 1 it is, at Mark's Duck house. Shall we meet at noon again?

Sorry you missed it, Dean, but then again you didn't miss anything worthwhile. Sigh. The next two outings are a first-time visit to Mark's Duck House and a repeat visit to New Fortune. We have no proposed dates for either one, other than weekends that aren't Easter. That's April 1 & 2, 8 & 9 (April 9 is Palm Sunday), 22 & 23, and 29 & 30.

Okay, so whoever gets there early-ish, grab us a table for 10 under the name Rockwell. We're coming in from the wastelands of northern Silver Spring and it takes a while to hustle my +1 out the door in the mornings, so we probably won't be first in... As usual I'll be wearing an orange hat and/or a bright orange hoodie.

Correct, it's the Falls Church location. Here's a link to goldenticket's helpful directions Hmm, do we also need to try the Reston location?

Let's set our meeting time as noon on Saturday. Whoever gets there first can sign us up for a table, using the group name of Rockwell. Who plans to attend? Chime in now so we know what size table we'll need. Here's the tentative list based on postings: perrik +1 cucas87 DanielK +2 deangold +1 Scott Johnston StephenB That's 8 so far. And then we must decide when to reconvene at New Fortune... edit: updated to add the young'uns

There are times when it is wiser to dine alone. Ditch the young whippersnappers and get something decent to eat. If you're stuck in the social groove, the all-day-breakfast items at Silver Diner can be pretty good (like the caramel French toast made with challah). I'll second the recommendation for Neisha Thai. It's a pretty restaurant (with a sort of Polynesian cave motif), and being attached to a mall they're good at being unthreatening. Spicing tends towards the mild side, but they'll punch it up on request. If you're hungry, try the crispy whole flounder with the ginger sauce.

So when do we hold our first Rockwellian pre-arranged banquet?