Gastro888

You interviewed every one of them?

I'm not trying to be a pest, but that's an amazing generalization that you've made, and one that I don't see supported by the (yes, Asian) crowds at New Fortune.

I did not say I interviewed every one of the Asian population but I know a fair number.

No, you're not trying to be a pest - you're just making a point to show that you're some sort of expert on dim sum and you know more about dim sum than I do.

Like many other foodie boards, this is a board where people post their opinions on food. Opinions are not fact and I've never stated my opinion as fact. This isn't a pissing contest, I'm not trying to make it one.

@Deangold: That's not fair to compare SF dim sum to MD dim sum. That's like comparing Kobe Bryant to a really good college basketball player in his second year!

Side note: I wish someone would invest the money needed into a real dim sum restaurant in the DC/MD/VA area. I wish there was a place that had fresh, piping hot, expertly made dim sum every day with great service. I wish I would get mustard, chile oil and XO sauce on the side without having to ask for them. I wish I could get Iron Goddess of Mercy tea instead of the swill that's normally served.

Ha gow had these nice, plump shrimps compared to the minced kind that other places delivered. That was great. But the turnip cakes were a little on the mushy side.

Sounds almost too good to be true! Did they have anything else besides shrimp in the ha gow? Some places put a bit of bamboo shoots or water chestnuts.

Sorry to hear about the turnip cakes. A mushy turnip cake is a bad thing.

What items did you miss that weren't available on their dim sum carts?

There isn't a 30 person deep queue in front of New Fortune because they seat 400. Try going on Mother's Day or Chinese New Year. Hour wait for a table. But any other Saturday or Sunday, prime time, the place is full or nearly full. Hollywood East also always had big lines, though it remains to be seen if the crowds will come back to the new place.

And when you say "the restaurants you mention...aren't give much thought as stellar dim sum places" or "his reputation is that is the best", whom are you quoting? Certainly not this board, the mainstream media in the DC area, or any of the other food boards, for which the consensus pick has clearly been New Fortune and Hollywood East.

I was referring to the Asian community at large.

You can add Asian Delight to this list now. Just opened on 5/2 in the White Oak area of Silver Spring. It was good, probably lacking in variety if compared to HE and its likes. Enjoyed not having a line!

There are seafood in the tanks and the bathrooms are nice, new and clean.

Items are $2.95 for a small item and $3.75 for a medium item. The rest I don't remember right now. The little man and I had plenty o'leftovers and the total bill came to $28 (seemed a bit much, but aren't these the new trend pricings?).

Dim sum during the week by order; Saturday, Sundays and Holidays by cart.

Asian Delight

11305 Lockwood Drive

Silver Spring, MD 20904

Thanks for the heads up! How was the ha gow?

I understand that tastes vary, but I'm surprised to see people mentioning Oriental East as being higher in quality than New Fortune, Silver Fountain, and Hollywood East. I've never found that to be the case.

True, tastes vary. I don't know what you consider good; the restaurants you mention as good really aren't given much thought as stellar dim sum places.

His reputation is that is the best (in MoCo) and the queue during the weekend speaks for itself. Yes, you can blame the size of the restaurant and management issues but there isn't a 30 person deep queue in front of either of the restaurants you mention.

We went to Good Fortune a few months ago and it's average for MoCo. If I wanted dim sum where I didn't have to wait in line, I will reluctantly go there. The ease of parking and finding seats wins over fighting for better food depending on the company.

Oriental East puts out better quality food than Good Fortune but the lack of space and FOH/BOH management causes issues in terms of seating and serving. My main gripes with Oriental East are that you do have to queue up 30 minutes prior to opening and the food service is erratic. You'll have a wave of carts and then nothing circles the room for a good twenty minutes. Not a good thing.

In regards to who is in the kitchen, Oriental East's dim sum chef is the same one that's been working there for years since they opened in the original location across the plaza. Is he the best? Yes, for MoCo. His baked buns are pretty good.

I need to hit up the other places to find out how they are in terms of quality. The lack of decent Chinese food in the area makes me focus on Vietnamese instead. It's easier to find a decent bowl of pho than it is a well made ha gow (shrimp dumpling). Oh well.

One note: be careful when you're buying faat choy as there is "fake" faat choy on the market. My mom warned me about how they just take random vegetables and process it to look like faat choy and it ends up all mushy instead of having the bouncy/slightly crispy/firm texture. It's not like the milk scare but it's more of a "buyer beware".

Don't laugh! I know someone who made $80K one summer with a Mr. Softee truck. Granted, that's soft serve ice cream, but that's a nice chunk of change!

Go to Maxim Supermarket in Rockville, MD. When you enter, turn to your left and you'll see a prepared foods section where the Cantonese roasted meats are along with several steam tables worth of food. There is also a cold foods section but your best bet is to walk past the steam table directly to the cooler lining the wall. There you'll find prepared offal: fu qi fei pian, or “husband and wife” slices of offal: tripe, tendon and tongue, pig's ears and beef tendon in chile oil.

FYI: They also make a dish of jellyfish in ginger scallion oil and one of fried whiting with jalapeno and peanuts. Let the jellyfish come to room temp while you reheat the whiting dish. What I usually do - and yes, it's tedious as hell - is pick out the jalapenos and put them aside. Place the whiting and the peanuts on a foil lined tray and pop them in a toaster oven that's been preheated to 350. Keep an eye on it while it heats up. When it's done to your liking, about 5-7 minutes, remove and mix with the jalapenos. Serve with beer.

Note: All these dish are found in the pre-pack section of the cooler lining the wall next to the steam tables.

We usually go to these two restaurants. Oriental East is always our first choice but it's a hassle. If you're not their early, you have to wait forever for a table. Also, the queue that forms before opening gets ridiculously long so plan accordingly. When we don't want to deal with the hassle, we go to Good Fortune. It's relatively good for what it is which is dim sum in Montgomery County except the decor and the bathrooms are in need of a major update. I've been spoiled by the offerings of better skilled dim sum chefs in Flushing, NY so it's hard for me to say any dim sum is good in the DCMDVA area.

Oriental East Restaurant

www.orientaleast.com

1312 East West Highway

Silver Spring, MD (301) 547-8200

Good Fortune Chinese Restaurant

2646 University Boulevard West

Wheaton, MD (301) 929-8818

Go there if you want a very casual, very informal dinner. It's like a super casual Jewish steakhouse. Go for the old school LES experience (pre-hipster). For more info, click here:

http://www.umamimart.com/2010/03/umamiventure-23-sammys-roumanian-steakhouse-nyc/

1) Working in the kitchen requires lots of physical stamina and strength.

2) Attending a culinary school will give you the foundation you need for your career. Also, it will allow you to make contacts in the culinary field and help you figure out what you want to do.

3) Culinary school costs a pretty penny so I'd take the advice of doing a stage (if you can) before enrolling.

4) Yes, those chefs did not attend culinary school but their situations are unique.

I have friends who attended pastry school at ICE in NYC. It is a great program and they enjoyed it. One did her stage at Jean-Georges.

However, it was quite expensive and tiring to do the program.

They stink less when frozen. It's still there but not it's not full on.

You don't know how much less until you've something to compare it to. I've been to Malaysia during durian season and it was scary.

Gastro888, I have only one thing to say:

Welcome back! We've missed you. Four posts in three years - where have you been?

Hi Don, thanks for the shout-out. Been around, eating here and there. Nice update to the site!

Primehouse

http://www.brguestrestaurants.com/restaurants/primehouse_new_york/index.php

Striphouse

http://www.yelp.com/biz/strip-house-steak-house-new-york

Both places have great food and good atmosphere sans the old school "steakhouse" feel. Yes, Primehouse is part of the B R Guest restaurant chain but they produce great food, have good service and I like the fact that I am not surrounded by dark wood, black leather and no light.

Primehouse is more modern while Striphouse is, well, like a bordello in a slightly kitchy way. That may work for what you're doing.

PL is great for what it is: no frills, old time, old school, not great on customer service, pre-hipster Brooklyn steakhouse with great food and no ambiance. It all depends on what you want. If you want to cross the bridge and have to pay cash only for your steak dinner, go for it.

You could try BLT Steak but I was disappointed by the quality of their meat. Great sides and popovers but the meat was below average.

Has anyone tried the pho places in Columbia, MD? I find the pho at An Loi to be watered down and not as flavorful as Pho 75/Pho Real.

Oyster pancake looks something like this:

Oh my goodness! Looks like the type they have up here in NYC. This will go on the list of must-try when I swing by the area next time.

They're too heavy handed with the sauce, tho.

SWEET! Thanks, Ilaine. Next time I'm in town, I'll definitely swing by that farm. Wow! I wonder how much those chickens sell for?

Poivort Farci, thank you for your tip. I apologize, I'm a bit confused about the rest of your post but it's good to know that everything comes out of one, ah, chute from the chicken. Makes me think...

Back on topic, where does Chef Ruta source his chickens from? Anyone know?

Interesting points. I don't know much about the poulty industry except that it's an extremely dirty business. I'm not endorsing a live poultry market inasmuch just commenting on my own experiences. I certainly don't know where the Purdue chicken or X brand chicken came as I don't know what that chicken was doing prior to arriving to the market. Given the points you make, I'm going to do a bit more research the next time around.

This particular market did not give particulars on how the chickens were raised. The chickens appeared to be clean and healthy and the market was relatively clean. There was no overflow of garbage or chicken excrement - it was as clean as a chicken market could get in the city. I did specifically pick a chicken on the top cage but I don't know how clean the chicken was prior to my selection.

(Of course the most ideal situation wuld be for me to find a organic, free-range chicken farm where I know how my poultry was raised but unfortunately I have no clue where to find one.)

I chose the chicken and they took the chicken to the backroom, slaughtered and cleaned it and presented it all nicely wrapped in a bag for me to take home. There were still some remaining end of the feathers in the tail that wouldn't come out without alot of picking and digging. Where is the uropygial gland on the tail? Is it directly on the top?

Rigor mortis, one of the physical phases of death, affects the tenderness of poultry, fish or red meat. If chicken meat is cut from the bone before it has had time to relax, it will be tough and may even shrink. Waiting 24-36 relaxes the muscles making them tender, but costs producers money in terms of space and refrigeration so they try to artificially relax the muscles with electrical shocks which acts like nerves contracting the muscles thereupon using up any left over energy. The live poultry market allows producers to bring their birds to market without refrigerated trucks but may not guarantee a stress-free slaughter which also affects tenderness in meats.

Folklore is comforting, but I trust science.

Factors Affecting Poultry Meat Quality

So if I am to follow your advice, I should get the birdy 24-36 hours before I want to consume it? Interesting, I'll have to try this theory out. Thanks!

What/where is this live poultry market?

When I was growing up in Maryland, there was a live poultry market in Chinatown. Now there's only Hooters.

Where I live now in outer borroughs of NY, there are many to be found in the Latin and Asian areas.

I'm impatient as hell, so I roasted the chicky last night. I didn't wait to brine or air dry the bird. I took that bird home, rinsed it with water and plucked the remaining stray feathers. (@#$!, why are tailfeathers so hard to remove?) Afterwards, I seasoned the bird with a generous amount of:

-salt

-5 spice powder

-white pepper

-garlic powder

-soy sauce

I roasted the chicken for 15 minutes at 450 and then for 40 minutes at 365 on a v-shaped rack. This made for a chicken that was very, very faintly pink at the bone - perfect for me. I dislike well-done chicken. It was fantastic - a tender, moist, juicy, delicious, robustly flavored chicken. I'm never buying supermarket chicken again. I'll be going to the live poultry market from now on. Screw Pedue and Whole Foods Market.

I am going to get a live chicken this week and try out Dr. No's recipe. (As in it will be freshly killed at the local live poultry market 5 minutes before my purchase of said chicky.) It'll probably be about a 5 pounder. I have the 5 spice powder available so it'll be much easier for me to do that brine than the others because I don't have all those herbs and spices in my pantry. Should I use his ratios for the brine or adjust? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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Now, as to the freaking bones. Cooking bone on the meat makes sense if you are cooking slowly. If cooked slowly, flavor and body can be imparted by the marrow. If you throw the pieces into a wok and cook them quickly, that does not occur. So nice try, but no cigar. I'm sure someone knows why the Chinese cut chicken this way, but does it matter? If it doesn't contribute to the flavor of the food, and if it requires the diner to perform surgery on the meal before eating it (or spit bones, or swallow a sharp bone), then perhaps they could try something new?

...

I might be late to the party but...

Yes, HEOTB is a Cantonese restaurant. I don't particularly care for Szchuan style food as it's way too spicy for my liking but I admire their use of peppers. To deangold's point, I believe it's peanut oil and not sesame oil that is heated to the smoking point and poured over food. Sesame oil has a low smoking point and turns bitter and acrid when heated to a high temperature. That's why it's added last to stir-fries and the like.

In regards to the chicken with the bone on it: yes, that's the authentic way and yes, we've been doing that way for centuries. Why? Well, if you had a small rice bowl that was about 3"-4" across and chopsticks, would it make sense to have a 1/4 chicken on the serving platter? How else would you eat the chicken if it wasn't hacked (proper term) into bite sized pieces. Here's the catch - if the seifu (master) is good and has a sharp blade there will not be any bone fragments. Alas, more often than not, that is not the case in restaurants. So bone fragments are a sign of a lazy chef who hasn't sharpened his cleaver in ages and doesn't know what the heck he's doing. Hacking is not the lazy chef's way out, it's just the way it's done. I think you'd get laughed out of a traditional-style Cantonese restaurant if you requested the chicken to be deboned and served.

And for the tea service charge at dim sum, that is standard practice at the majority of dim sum restaurants. It's not shady, it's just the way it's done. Like a corkage fee at a restaurant, a tea service is standard business practice for a dim sum restaurant. Usually at dim sum there are a greater variety of teas offered that go beyond the standard Chinese "oolong" (really a tea base) tea that's served during lunch/dinner service. Your choices, depending on the restaurant, usually range from (below in Cantonese):

-Gook Fa Cha (Chrysanthum tea, really a tisane) served w/ rock sugar on the side.

-Boo Nei Cha (I don't know the translation for this but it's a stronger, "red" tea. I think it's semi-fermented or fermented. But not like oolong)

-Gook Bo Cha (1/2 Gook Fa, 1/2 Bo Nei - a good compromise) served w/ rock sugar on the side

The less common ones (hard to find in the DC area):

-Hung Pen Cha (Jasmine)

-Tet Kun Yum Cha (Iron Goddess of Mercy - semi-fermented tea, fragrant)

-Kung Fu Cha (only found in upscale dim sum places in NY. I've not found it in the DC area. It involved a little cermony and a very expensive tea. There's a place up here in Flushing, NY that has a reserved dim sum ROOM for those who order the kung fu cha. At $5 a head, I'd better get my own freaking room.)

Geez, you all are making this sound like strictly a Chinese affair. It's the Asian Lunar New Year. Asia is somewhat bigger than just China (the last time I checked). A small group of friends will repair to the Escoffier/Grover manse and indulge in a Korean New Year lunch normally served only to the highest ranking member of the Korean Court. Possibly pictures will follow.

PM me and I'll let you know the address to send those red envelopes .

Most Asian countires celebrates the Lunar New Year in one form or another. However, most East Asians migrated however many centuries ago from China so traditions overlap. Think of it as a big ol' rice pot. I just think that over here in America, the Lunar New Year is closely associated with the Chinese because they were the first group of Asians to come en mass to America.

Acutally, Southern Chinese people have a whole fish and a whole chicken on the table during the new year. A roast pig is a nice addition but not as important as those items.