CONFESSIONS OF A DIM SUM MONSTER

Admittedly, I love to eat, who doesn’t? And few of my favorites are basically Asian dishes, obviously because of my roots. Other than Filipino food, I like Japanese! Sushi, sashimi, tempura and teppanyaki which I have tasted as authentic as it gets when I was in Tokyo for 2 weeks last year. From Pinoy and Japanese gastromic delights, I also love Chinese food! Yang chow fried rice, Peking Duck, some Schezuan dishes and yes, dim sum and dumplings!

Can you honestly differentiate a dim sum from a dumpling? Certainly, I cannot until this post (or perhaps when I blogged about them few years ago). It only proves that I haven’t started dwelling in the food that I eat the way a righteous foodie should be. (google translate : I only love to eat but too lazy to read!).

“Dim sum is a Cantonese term for a type of Chinesedish that involves small individual portions of food, usually served in a small steamer basket or on a small plate. Going for dim sum is usually known in Cantonese as going to “drink tea” (yum cha, 飲茶). (Sourced via  Wiki)

“Dumplings are cooked balls of dough.They are based on flour, potatoes, bread, or matzoh, and may include meat, fish, or sweets. They may be cooked by boiling, steaming, simmering, frying, or baking. They may have a filling, or there may be other ingredients mixed into the dough. Dumplings may be sweet or spicy. They can be eaten by themselves, in soups or stews, with gravy, or in any other way. While some dumplings resemble solid water boiled doughs, such as gnocchi, others such as wontons resemble meatballs with a thin dough covering.” (Sourced via  Wiki)

As an expat for 7 months now, I am still in the process of absorbing everything in my new ground and that includes diversity of everything. Penang celebrates the presence of its 3 predominant races -Malays, Indians and Chinese. And indubitably, with their religions and cultures, food also varies and offers quaint appeal to everyone’s taste buds.

I have been keeping my love affair with Chinese food long before I decided to work here in Penang.

And so I heard that there’s a cheap but authentically great dim sum place tucked in Butterworth called Orient Precious Restaurant, which is actually an upscale side street eatery (or in Pinas we call it, “turo-turo“) but to me and the rest of my fellows, a haven of irresistible dim sums. However, I regret the fact that I passed on the first chance to sample them for I didn’t join my colleague-friends who came in troop (15+ of them!) when they dined there last week. It was because I was waiting for a Skype conversation with my family.

Sunday came and a suggestion from my housemates was raised that I should try it and come with them. And so I did. But luck wasn’t on my side because we found out that Orient Precious Restaurant is closed every Sunday evening.

Last night (Tuesday, 22 February), we decided to go there again and finally, we’re not disappointed.

Here’s my shameless display of what I pig-out :

FIRST ROUND!

After several minutes of waiting for the second serving…

ROUND TWO!

Burp! 😛

Plus, I ordered an enormous Bola-bola siopao as takeaway which I had for breakfast the next day.

Was everything worth my RM 22.60 (PhP 316.40) ?  You bet!

That scallop-dim sum in thick soup and those seafood siomai and others which I didn’t bother to ask the names, are so tasteful that it can give the Chinese-restaurant and eateries in Ongpin and Binondo Streets in Manila, or even in Hong Kong a run for their money.

We’re all ready to go but one of my friends asked me to photograph the only pet in sight that evening in that the dim sum place…

Of all living creatures, I hate to see cats in food places that serve dim sum and dumplings, don’t you? If you’re Pinoy like me and you’re familiar with that running joke associating those yummies with those furry pets, you know what I mean, hahaha!

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