I know you’re thinking, “Another dim sum post??” Friends, we weren’t kidding when we said we love dim sum. We take our dim sum very seriously. So seriously that we were lined up outside Empire Seafood at 9am on a Saturday so we could get our dim sum fix. Ok and also because if you went before 11am, you got a 20% discount.
EARLY BIRD SPECIAL
We knew about the 20% discount but when we sat down, we noticed they had a few early bird specials including the pork spareribs on rice. We tend not to order this because a) they usually take about 20 minutes to cook and b) they tend to be around $11 which is too expensive. However, it was on the menu for $5.95 so we took a chance on it. It came out within a few minutes which was suspiciously fast. They must have several dishes premade before the restaurant opened.
This was OK. We wish they had used black bean sauce on the pork spareribs and cut up the sausage a bit better. This dish is so good because usually the fat from the pork and sausage drips down into the rice. Cooking it in the clay pot also makes the rice at the bottom crispy. However, it seemed like they just threw some rice into this pot instead of cooking it in the pot. If it wasn’t so cheap, we would have been more upset.
THE USUAL SUSPECTS
Har gao makes an appearance in all our dim sum posts! Howie liked these har gao. He said the skin wasn’t as thin and delicate as they do at Kirin (his personal favorite) but it was still decent. They had generous chunks of shrimp with little filler.
Empire Seafood had several kinds of rice rolls but we went for beef because I like the minced beef they use in these. Unfortunately, I found the beef to be lacking in flavor and I had to apply a generous amount of the sweet soy sauce to eat these.
If har gao is Howie’s dim sum of choice, then siu mai is mine. I liked that they put truffle on top of the siu mai here. The wrapper was delicate though probably not handmade at the restaurant. They used a good amount of fatty pork and shrimp. These siu mai packed a lot of flavor!
We could have ordered one less dish for this meal. We were so full at the end! We felt this meal was a great deal and will be back for their early bird specials soon.
