Offbeat Eats

Last year my coworker introduced me to Sofra in Cambridge, and we’ve been back to that part of Cambridge several times, and also started exploring the rest of that neighborhood (West Cambridge/Belmont). Looking around, there are actually some pretty neat places around there, such as Eastern Lamejun Bakers (which came highly recommended by an Armenian friend of mine), a few good wine stores, and some rather nice vintage stores. We also found ourselves walking by Shangri-La Chinese Cuisine, and became intrigued due to the large number of Chinese people waiting around outside for a table. So we put on our list to check out, and after this weekend’s hiking trip in Boston, it seemed like a good place to grab dinner.

Our US-based route from New Hampshire to Detroit also had us passing through Cleveland at lunchtime. While we were coming back to Cleveland for three days later in the trip, I figured this would be a good opportunity to check out someplace towards the East side of town, perhaps towards China Town. In fact, we had both been craving dim sum for a while, and Cleveland has more than a few dim sum joints, so I figured I’d give one a try. However, from past experience, I know that they vary greatly in quantity, price, and authenticity, so I decided to check out my friend Nancy’s blog, Fun Playing With Food, and see if she had any recommendations. And upon reading her recent review of Emperor’s Palace, it sounded like it was worth checking out.

I rather enjoy the fact the Boston has a reasonable good Chinatown, although like most “Chinatowns” over the last several decades it has really become more of a “Pan Asian Town” than just Chinese places, with a particularly strong Vietnamese and Korean presence as well. But it’s still the home to several well-regarded Chinese restaurants. In particular, Gourmet Dumpling House and Hei La Moon have both been on my “hit list” for a while… but they’ve both foiled my past attempts at dining, either through being intractably busy (well, it didn’t help that I didn’t check the calendar last time, and showed up the bay before Chinese New Year last time) or arriving just after they stopped serving. But I’ve been trying to get back there. Well, two weekends ago, I finally had a good opportunity: our friend Bridget wanted to celebrate her birthday with an outing to Boston. So we all piled in two cars with a bunch of friends, and stop number one was… dim sum at Hei La Moon…

The night before the Chicago Death March, we continued the tradition of going out for dinner and drinks before the March. Our Chicago host, Kevin, is soon leaving Chicago for New York State, and had a number of Chicago institutions have been on his “bucket list” to finally try before he leaves. One of them was Sun Wah. A long time Chicago institute over 25 years old (although it’s only been in it’s current Uptown location for a few years, having previously been located in a small spot on Argyle Street), Sun Wah is basically your standard Cantonese-style BBQ joint (or in proper parlance, a “Siu mei” place): several different meats (chicken, pork, duck), put on a spit, glazed with a thick marinade and roasted rotissery-style for hours until fully cooked. The result is a rather pleasant combination of juicy meat (the glaze seals in most of the moisture), deep flavor, and a really crispy and yummy fried skin. They’ve also got an extensive menu of side veggies, soups, cocktails (I opted for their “MSG” cocktail, which in this case stood for “Momma-Slappin’ Giger”, a nice little cocktail loaded to the brim with ginger), rice dishes, and some fairly standard Chinese-American fare…

We celebrated Boxing Day in London by doing some more wandering about town. One of the places we checked out was London’s Chinatown. While a lot smaller and more compact than the Chinatowns in San Francisco, New York, and Montreal that I’ve recently experienced, it does sport a quite impressive number of Asian markets, and more importantly, restaurants. So we used this as a good opportunity to check out New World Chinese Restaurant, one of London’s better-known (and older) Dim Sum restaurants.

Many people outside the region don’t realize it, but Cleveland has a very vibrant and active Asian community, and several of my trips to Cleveland (usually to NASA Glenn) have involved trips to Asiatown for some good Chinese food. Looking to try someplace new, this time I decided to check up on some of the local blogs (Fun Playing With Food, in particular), and found that several sources recommended Wonton Gourmet and BBQ. Located on Payne Avenue, Wonton Gourmet is located in one of those fairly generic storefronts, that, if not for the big “Wonton Gourmet & BBQ” banner, you might mistake for a dry cleaner or office supply store…

After several days of eating some (admittedly very good) Mexican-themed food at a conference in Palm Desert, I was ready to have some Asian flavors instead. For some reason, I was craving dim sum, and, unfortunately, there didn’t appear to be any dim sum places in Palm Springs/Palm Desert. Until I searched Google more carefully. Turns out the Supreme Dragon, while being in general your typical Chinese restaurant, has a reasonably good menu of dim sum items as appetizers, including a dim sum platter