Sour Grapes

I’d been to Sun Sui Wah on Main St for dim sum twice before and my palate had always been treated pretty well, so we thought we’d take The Meemster for the 2nd dim sum experience of her life, to shower upon her the glories of Cantonese tea time. Her dim sum deflowering had taken place at Furama in Montreal, which is ok if you’re in Montreal, but this is Vancouver, promised land of the push cart lady. They should probably change the sun in the provincial flag to a siu mai.

In the past Sun Sui Wah’s baked items, notably the egg tarts and the baked bbq pork rolls, were phenomenal; some of the best Cantonese baking I’ve ever had, with super light and flaky pastry. And, although we’d once experienced an issue with burned tofu fa, a delicate tofu pudding dressed with ginger syrup, by and large things were above-par on the dim sum front. (Don’t ask me how they managed to burn the tofu fa, I don’t know, but it had a pronounced smoky flavour throughout and a wierd grainy “instant tofu fa mix” texture.)
This time, Friday at noon, we decided to branch out from our established safety zone of baked goods and try some of our dim sum favourites that we had yet to put to the SSW test. The results were upsettingly mixed.

Shrimp rice roll (har cheung):
The skin was too thick and pasty and the sauce was watery. Note to chef: if you don’t clean the shrimp properly, then your har cheung end up tasting like old shrimp shit. Is this an authentic Guangdong peasant version I’m unfamiliar with? Perhaps the “gummy skin, watery sauce, shrimp shit” version? In a seafood restaurant, with a glowing but perhaps out of date NY Times review, this was just gouge-my-round-eyes-out-with-a-chopstick sad.

Battered fried squid:
Nice light crisp batter, tender squid morsels, fried in clean oil. Could have been seasoned a bit more but overall I’d order again without hesitation.

Spring rolls:
These were not bad at all, nice seafood filling (yes that was a shrimp, no it didn’t taste like poop), crispy skin, no greasy fryer flavour. Order them for your white friends then eat them all yourself… (this raises an interesting question: is there a prejudice in the Chinese Canadian community, against spring rolls, because they are so popular with Caucasians? How about plum sauce? .. hmmmm)

Siu Mai:
Overcooked, wrappers falling apart. Decent flavour with an overly springy filling (perhaps a bit too much of the corn star chef?), ultimately forgettable.

Preserved egg and pork congee:
I thought it was quite good but I hate preserved egg and there were perhaps half a dozen egg slivers in the large bowl, with lots of pork. Pandy, the bi-polar panda and congee connaisseur, declared it too watery, but he likes his congee thick.

Steamed scallop dumplings:
Pretty unexciting, not much sea fresh flavour, decent filling but again overly springy.

Cold smoked salmon and jellyfish platter:
We had to order it, it was so BC. The smoked salmon was decent, the jellyfish was under-seasoned, or perhaps I should say “devoid of seasoning”, I love jellyfish.

So despite your cardiologists warning to the contrary, the best stuff at SSW seems to be deep fried or baked. I have to confess I am a complete addict of the rice rolls…. They’re one of my litmus tests of good dim sum. Where should I go for good rice rolls?

The saddest part of it all is that The Meemster remains unconverted to the dim sum cause. She’s convinced that dim sum is a pasty glutinous experience, littered with shrimp shit and the occasional deep fried highlight.

N/B: if I’m not mistaken SSW does the haggard Cantonese old maid dim sum cart service (Louder baby, LOUDER and more shrill!! ) on the weekend only. Weekday lunch seems strictly a la carte (no pun intended).

For some more SSW reviews out of the blog ethers:

fifth flavor: our monthly Vancouver “day” trip… 24 hours this time

www.eatvancouver.net/2008/02/03/sun-sui-wah-dim-sum-vancouver-bc

vaneats.blogspot.com/2007/04/sun-sui-wah-seafood-restaurant.html

http://kookyculinary.com/2008/04/24/dim-sum-sun-sui-wah-richmond

http://chowtimes.com/2006/03/19/dim-sum-at-sun-sui-wah

http://www.hoyummy.com/2007/08/19/review-dim-sum-at-sun-sui-wah/

And check out Rolands SSW photos on flickr

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 7:30 am and is filed under restaurants, food photography.