Bourdain throwing stones

Anthony Bourdain is the best food writer walking this tasty green earth. He doesn’t like the Food Network. Or maybe he does.  Enjoy his rant.

http://blog.ruhlman.com/2007/02/guest_blogging_.html

Review: Chiang’s Gourmet

Chiang’s Gourmet serves Shanghai-style dim sum in its Lake City location. I love dim sum; I’ll even eat it when it’s not top class, but I’ll admit that I don’t know where to go for good Chinese eats on a weekend afternoon in Seattle. The easy answer is Vancouver, of course, but let’s do the best we can with what we have.

I went with a couple friends today – as one was Chinese and the other Singaporean, I handed the menus to them and said “go nuts!” They promptly obliged, chatting with the waitress and arguing over what to order.

The dishes were incredible. Here’s what we ordered:

• Some kind of soy milk soup, sweet. This was essentially a bowl of sweetened soy milk – it felt like you should drink it, and towards the end of the meal I picked up the bowl and did just that.
• Another soy milk soup, but savory, and filled with bits and pieces of unidentified vegetation. Delicious.
• Beef in layered pancake. I’ve had this dish before, and the keys to success are tender beef slices, and a soft pastry pancake. This dish almost got it right on both counts.
• Long sticks of fried dough that looked a lot like Spanish churros but without any sugar. Delicious and probaby not very good for you. I dipped some of this into the sweet soy milk and it went down a treat.
• Noodle dish with beans, except the noodles themselves were made from green beans. Yes, that is correct, the noodles were made from green beans. I have no idea how this is possible. They were almost clear, somewhat like glass noodles… in fact, now that I do my Wikipedia research, they probably were made from mung beans, like glass noodles actually are. My friends were arguing about this, now I guess we know who was right! It was a great dish, and some shredded chicken gave some body to the airy and light noodles.
• Spicy dumplings. This was the high point of the meal – I think they’re listed on the menu as “Sichuan dumplings”, or somesuch. Absolutely marvelous dumplings, soaked in a moderate amount of hot sauce. It’s worth the trip just for these. Probably the best dumplings I’ve had in the US, west of the Mississippi.
• Steamed pork bun, which had a mixture of pork and vegetable inside. It was slightly larger and heavier than a classic Cantonese-style pork bun; I prefer the latter but it was nice to see a different take on it
• A small roll of rice, with some vegetables, shredded dry pork, and granules of sugar inside. Eating this for dessert was a fitting end to a great meal.

If you want good dim sum, but are too lazy to drive to Vancouver to get it, give Chiang’s Gourmet a try.

Chiang’s Gourmet
7845 Lake City Way N.E., Seattle, WA [map]
(206) 527-8888