Dim Sum at Lee Garden

A few weeks I headed up the old 161 trail west to yonder city of Dublin for a bit of dim sum with my fellow Columbus Foodlovers (there's a meetup group; you should join.).  Immediately upon arriving at the restaurant the owner looked me over and said "your friends are in the back."  Hm.  Do I stick out that much?  At any rate, our group sat at 2 giant round tables with very large lazy susans (like a wooden turntable).  And the, the carts started coming.  There were 10 of us at the table, and while it was a nice group, a pleasingly diverse group, from all age groups and all nationalities, I think 10 people might be a few too many.  We decided to go back with a smaller group, this time with for (I think 6 is the magic number, just for the record).

So.  For some basics on dim sum.  Dim Sim is a brunch thing.  Saturday or Sunday mornings you head to your local dim sum-serving-Chinese restaurant (best to make a reservation, you never know how busy it's going to be).  You sit down and ask for tea, and then you beg for water; try to drink so much water they will just put a picture of it on your table.  I've never eaten a meal where I had to consume an entire gallon of water.  The tea at Lee Garden is very good, and here's a little trick our server told us - if you are ready for a tea refill, you don't have to ask, you just put the lid up on the teapot.  That's the secret signal. 

You don't order anything.  Carts and trays and steam tables begin coming around, and you make a choice based up what the server is offering.  But be careful, because if you don't plan things correctly, you will be too full when the one thing you really want goes by.  They will let you take leftovers home, though, so don't be afraid to over-order a little bit.  After you say yes to a few concoctions, tuck in:

We chose fried pounded sweet rice buns which were full of pork, tiny shrimp, and black mushrooms.  The thick rice wrapper is sweet but the savory insides and the crispy fried exterior both act as a counterbalance.

We had my favorite taro buns; the soft, slightly pink taro root flesh surrounds bits of chicken and vegetables - and the occasional bone fragment - and the whole bun is covered with shredded taro and then fried, so it ends up with a shredded-wheat kind of texture. 

Shrimp crepes made with giant rice noodle sheets, a savory and slightly spicy sauce is poured over.  These are great - a little slippery and challenging with chopsticks, but definitely more than the sum of their apparent parts.

We had chicken feet in a slightly spicy, slightly sweet black bean sauce.  My second encounter with chicken feet and I'm still not sure about them. It isn't the taste - they are very delicious - it's just the bones and the negotiating.  Once I can eat them the proper way - put the chicken foot in mouth and extract the naked bones, one by one, I think I'll like them just fine.  Then there's also that creepy feeling that one is eating a tiny little hand.  Which, of course, I was the only one to think of, and then Husband was like, great I was fine until you said that.

We had a huge variety of dumplings, and a lot of them looked the same, so I won't bore you.  We had pork shumai, which as very good, and we had two types of shrimp dumplings, one round and one moon-shaped, and they were also very good, we had a triangular dumpling with greens inside.

We had calamari in curry sauce.

We had pork ribs, which I think are more like rib caps, because each piece is a piece of bone or connective tissue surrounded by a morsel of porky goodness, and you really have no choice but to put it in your mouth, try to chew as much meat as possible off, and then extract the bone as ladylike as possible.

At some point, one of the servers decided we were adventurous, and offered us tripe & tendon, and pig's blood & scallion.  Of course, we said, giddy with our success eating chicken feet.  And that moment was when the scariest bowl of food I have ever encountered was placed before me.  It jiggled.  It had parts I have only seen in human anatomy class.  It quivered.  It mocked me.  Husband took a bite - I should mention here, that Husband is an extremely adventurous eater; he loves all sorts of innards and offal and tripe and bits - so Husband takes a bite and instantly turns completely white.  He is stuck in time for a moment, caught between the shame of spitting something out and the horror of looking at the quivering innards for another hour of brunch.  "I"  "i"  "no.  I'm fine," he insists when the moment is over, but for the next 3 minutes, his voice still sounds a little shaky.  So much for our bravado.

We did, however, try the pig's blood.  The pig's blood is formed into little cubes and then served with scallions - these scallions really tasted a lot like ramps; maybe they were Chinese chives?  I nibbled a scallion to prepare myself, and then took a little square of the blood cake.  It was refreshingly easy to eat and almost disappointingly without challenge, except the mental challenge.  It's like meaty tofu.  The texture is almost exactly like tofu.  I would probably try it again with a little chili sauce.

And then came my favorite, the sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaf.  I don't know what I love these so much except of course the presentation, and then the lotus gives the rice a rich and earthy flavor.  The rice surrounds a variety of meats; this time it included pork, shrimp, and dried shrimp, along with scallions.  These rice balls are so good I could eat one for lunch every day.

And so was my most recent dim sum experience at Lee Garden.  A friend recently went to Sunflower and gave them the edge over Lee Garden, so we'll have to try that one next.  And, to any enterprising Chinese cooks, I think a dim sum spot around campus or even close to the Short North would be an amazing hit.  You'd have to start serving at like 3am, though, but you can close at 1.  I promise I'll be there on opening day.

Here's another bonus for Lee Garden - they serve food until very late.  So if you're looking to get away from the jerks who hang at your local after-work spot, go to Lee Garden for some late night Karaoke and plates of Chinese broccoli.  And maybe some crispy duck.

Info:  Lee Garden  2685 Federated Blvd Columbus, OH 43235614.754.1525