Little Pieces of Heaven

My grandmother is visiting from Lima, Peru. She is my grandfather's (my mom's dad) second wife. She is  Peruvian Chinese so she speaks Spanish and minimal Chinese. She understands more Chinese than she can speak. (Like me! But I don't speak Spanish.) Whenever anyone comes to visit, it gives our whole family a good reason to go out to eat!

My Grandma Amelia with her great-grandchildren (minus Zachy)

Food is important to my family. Since my parents were in the Chinese restaurant business, they are pretty picky about restaurant food. We went for dim sum. I think dim sum is 'little bite size pieces of heaven'. Literally it means 'point of the heart'. It's not meant to 'fill you up' (the size of each piece can give you that impression). It's meant as a snack and therefore only meant to 'touch the heart'. But if you add up all those little pieces, you can get full fast.

It was my first time at this particular restaurant, Champagne Seafood Restaurant (one that my dad picked) and I was very impressed. I was impressed with the amount of pieces in each dish. It's usually 3-4 pieces depending on the item. They had 4-5 pieces per plate. Of course, their prices were up there with the elite dim sum restaurants like Koi Palace and Yang Sing.

The first dishes you have to order have to be these two dishes:

Shui Mai (steamed shrimp & pork dumplings)

Har Gaw (steamed shrimp dumplings)

This is one of my favorites: Fun Guo (steamed Chiu Chou dumplings)

Pan Fried Daikon (Turnip) cake (Matthew's cat was named after this dish)

Shrimp Rice Noodles

This was especially delicious and very tender: Steamed Chicken Feet with Black Bean sauce (You're not 'real' Chinese if you don't eat this!)

Steamed Pork Ribs with Black Bean Sauce (another one of my must-haves!)

We had other dishes too but I didn't want to take pictures of every dish.

 And for Dessert, my favorite...

Egg Custard Tart (I was not impressed with theirs. I like the crust flaky not crunchy.)

Below are the entree dishes we ordered. Typically you don't need any entrees when you are dim summing. There is just so much to eat but if you have some picky kids that don't like the variety of dim sum, these dishes will satisfy their hunger.

One of our favorite entrees: Scrambled Egg and Shrimp Chow Fun

Chicken Chow Mein Hong Kong Style (crispy noodles)

Finally, some food that my father-in-law can appreciate! (He always comments that my 'sweet-tooth' foods that I blog about are too tempting for him and unfortunately he cannot indulge in them due to health reasons.)