Spring Sunday: On Relaxing Weekends

This? Sunday morning here in San Diego. Winter, we hardly knew ye.

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China Max

D. and I stopped by for a dim sum fix. I've posted previously about China Max, but this time, I have pictures. I'll keep it short and sweet. Great dim sum joint on Convoy St. It's on par with the good LA dim sum restaurants. It doesn't serve dim sum on carts, but I'm more than ok with that.





A sampling of our dim sum order... we ordered a ton of dishes and finished almost all of them. Starting with D.'s beloved BBQ pork cherng fun or rice noodle rolls.



I had the shrimp version:



Har gow, or shrimp dumplings. China Max makes them beautifully.



We had two types of buns: BBQ pork and custard (pictured). The custard bun was sub-par this time. I don't think they steamed it long enough, so the custard wasn't quite done.



D. wanted potstickers and I wanted Peking-style pork spareribs, which are on the lunch menu. We indulged our guilty pleasures.





Daan taat, or my beloved egg tarts. Great dessert.



Fantastic meal. It was a lot of food for $20 a person. A tad pricey, but dim sum tends to be slightly pricier than the average lunch.

888 Seafood Restaurant

It's not a visit to LA without dim sum, so here's another entry about it. The dim sum's pretty good here, but the best part about it is that my mother has connections, so we rarely have to wait for a table. We've waded through a 2-hour-wait crowd to a table, so it's pretty cool. Anyhoo, some dishes (see previous entries for Wikipedia links to more information):

Shiu mai and har gow. Shiu mai is a pork/shrimp dumpling and har gow is shrimp only. The wrappers are different with the yellow wrapper being wheat based and the translucent wrapper being rice based.



Cherng fun, which are rice noodle rolls. These are filled with shrimp.



Chinese style meatballs. Tenderized ground beef rolled with onions and spinach. Served with Worcestershire sauce.



Ah, the buns. Custard on the left, BBQ pork on the right. My father also likes the chicken ones.



Picture of a cart. It's a pretty cart, so I included the picture. We didn't order any of these dishes, but some of them are quite good. The buns are BBQ pork (baked, not steamed like the ones above) and pineapple. Not in the same bun. The fried dumplings (top, second plate from left) are good. The dough is rice based and quite sticky. So it's crisp on the outside, but chewy/sticky on the inside and filled with meat.



The stainless-steel carts, which are less pretty and more typical:



Good dim sum and we'll always come back.

China Max

Ah, my Cantonese food haven in San Diego. I have to say that of all the types of Chinese food out there, this stuff reminds me of home. Cantonese food tends to be comforting to me, rather than being comfort food in general.

I had a major craving for Peking-style pork spareribs. Naturally, since I preferred them made in the Hong Kong style with the thick sauce, we headed to China Max, purveyor of good dim sum and Cantonese fare. I left the camera at home, so there are no pictures from this trip. Too bad, as their dim sum is as easy on the eyes as it is on the belly.

We ordered the spareribs with the following dim sum dishes:

• BBQ pork buns
• BBQ pork rice noodle rolls
• Egg tarts
• Custard buns (same as BBQ pork, but filled with an eggy custard)
• Potstickers (it's clear at this point that D. was in charge of the ordering... scroll down on the Wikipedia article to see the comment on potstickers)
• Har gao (shrimp dumplings... my choosing, of course)
  

The food was amazing. The dim sum dishes are a lot like tapas and can be a little pricey (rice noodles rolls and har gao were $4 each), but China Max does an excellent job. The Peking-style pork spareribs really hit the spot. I liked doing this mix of entree and dim sum, so we'll have to do it again.