Ysquared, Thane's wife chose the place for it's picturesque qualities...
for the locale had a view of the Bay as well as the Oakland Bay Bridge, San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge.....
Ysquared originally considered Asian Pearl at the Pacific East Mall in Richmond, but felt that Hong Kong East Seafood had better quality dim sum (i.e. more expensive as well) and was prettier to bring guests.
Bert and I haven't had dim sum in ages, like waaaaay before TC was born. Our first taste of dim sum was in San Francisco during a college trip, then again with Thane while he was still a grad student (we went to some place in Sausalito of all places and Berkeley). In San Diego, our dim sum experiences were limited to just Emerald and Jasmine (the former being pretty mediocre).
So Chinese readers, please forgive my ignorance about dim sum and Chinese food in general. I read online that this place gets packed pretty quickly. We got there around 10 am and the parking lot was still pretty empty. No lines....yet. Joining us was Thane's younger cousin, who was actually a former student of mine when I student taught English (yikes) waaaay back in 1996. She is now in her early 30's! Say wut?!
Inside, tanks filled with live fish and shell fish soon to be eaten.
See...still pretty empty. It's quite spacious in here as well.
Crappy photo, but hey, look at that view!
We let Ysquared do the ordering...
I'm not sure if this is standard, but it really helped having photos of the actual items in the extensive menu:
Even though we didn't get dessert here, I still wanted to throw in this photo...
The black sesame rolls looked interesting though.
Later on, we took photos by the Bay with Thane and his family...
Although this was a fancier dim sum place where you could order off the menu, there was still alone woman (at least on our side of the restaurant) wheeling around carts of dim sum.
Our order sheet:
These were just some of the items that Ysquared ordered - shrimp and beef filled egg noodle rolls, a fried tofu roll (TC was curious about it), rice in steamed lotus leaf packets, shrimp balls with fried noodles surrounding them, various fried dumplings, one flaky type of meat pie, and steamed dumplings.
The waiter broke out with scissors to cut up some of the dishes like this one (don't know what it's called). I liked the chewy rice exterior and the meat filling.
I didn't really like the taste of the rice in these lotus leaf wrapped packages...
Along with rice, there seemed to be beans of some sort. It smelled like....wet leaves. I just didn't like the scent of those leaves.
Dumplings with a pan fried bottom. Thane's wife got this since their son likes this, along with steamed shrimp dumplings.
This was the flaky mini meat pie that we liked:
This is what TC wanted to try - we liked the flakiness of the wrapper but the filling was tofu, which I don't care too much for.
We were told that this was some sort of soup dumpling served in a baking cup. The soup was pretty hot and the dumpling skin was thin but durable.
Ysquared ordered four steamers full of these tender shrimp dumplings which everyone enjoyed.
I happened to catch a peek at the bill (Thane, ever the gracious host, took care of the check) and it was $86! Holy $%#@! So, thanks Thane!
Not being a dum sum aficionado, I thought the tid bits we had were pretty good for a light brunch. Of course we had plans to snack later throughout that morning and afternoon so we were not expecting a full on meal. Thane and family had to do errands, so after brunch and our photo sessions, we went our separate ways for the day.
More of that view...
The restaurant was very packed when we left with lines of people waiting in the foyer and out the door! I'm glad that we got there early!
See the beautiful clear sky? There would only be a couple more days of this nice weather before the storm hit SF.
Our FastPass works on the bridge! It was awesome using the car pool lane to bypass all the single driver suckers the next day. We just breezed on through the crappy lines with our electronic transponder.
We didn't have a chance to explore the Marin side this trip so maybe during the summer we can do that...
A beautiful day it was!
Who else went to Hong Kong East Seafood?
Jinxi posted on this place back when she used to live in Berkeley - Sept. 2011.
There is also a more comprehensive post by Wandering Chopsticks who went for a friend's wedding reception back in February 2010 (there's a photo of the now banned shark's fin soup)
Hong Kong East Seafood
3199 Powell St.
Emeryville, CA 94608
(510) 655-3388
www.hkeo.us (website is currently under construction)
Up next - exploring a bit of Berkeley and revisiting some of our old "haunts"...
2 comments:
How funny! I've actually eaten there! We were flying home from SFO Christmas night but needed to grab dinner before the flight. Well, who's open for Christmas dinner? Chinese restaurants! I just looked up something that was on our way to the airport and this place had good reviews. So, we didn't have dim sum, but we had a pretty good dinner that was probably better (and cheaper) than airport dining.
hi leanne! :) wow, that's so cool! this is a pretty popular place! imagine having a wedding reception here with those fantastic views! haha, if you've ever watched "A Christmas Story", their Christmas dinner got messed up (or eaten by the family dog or something) so the family went out to eat...at a Chinese restaurant, haha!
Post a Comment