Can only agree about the lackluster Tim Ho Wan review, my friends and I do dim sum on a regular basis (2-3 times a month) and while the food at Tim Ho Wan is good, it's neither worth the wait nor worth going out of the way for. Just go to Flushing or your usual Chinatown spots like Golden Unicorn or Jing Fong, and have the same thing. It would be interesting to have the crews from the New York and the Hong Kong locations switch kitchens to share knowledge and recipes - the NYC THW food (besides the steamed pork buns and eggplant w/ shrimp at the NYC location) is nothing special.
The rolling cart joints in Chinatown are inferior to Tim Ho Wan. Pete gives a great description of the turnip cakes. When the pork buns are good they are very good. eggplant was dripping oil the one time we had it. shrimp har gow are always good.
YUM, Pinch is so good. Smart of Pete Wells to discover my favorite spot in SoHo (and all of NYC, really).
2
They keep adding Din Tai Fung around Puget Sound but not enough yet to dent the lines to get onto the waiting list.
1
I have eaten at Tim Ho Wan's Fourth Avenue location and am surprised that Pete Wells gave it a star. I've had high end and low end dim sum in New York (Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens) and in San Francisco and Tim Ho Wan had the most limited menu and the least inspired flavors of any dim sum restaurant I've visited. Line or no line, I would never go back. And the pan fried turnip cake, normally a favorite of mine, was flavorless and mushy.
1
Thanks, Pete - Love your reviews! You're one of the very few top restaurant critics who takes the time for these tiny, out of the way spots - casual and tasty ones. And now that you've given the ultimate tip here that the lines around the block have almost disappeared, we're on our way.
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Tim Ho Wan locations are usually incredibly busy -- lines way beyond the doors. I wish I could've eaten there.
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The only way to see if Mr. Well's review is accurate is to eat at both restaurants. Oh joy, oh happiness is putting myself to the test! Willingly I sacrifice my tummy in this worthwhile endeavor. If I am forced to make repeated visits, so be it.
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Very nice review, Pete. It strikes me that reviewing a dim sum restaurant is probably a hefty challenge for a food critic, and you've made it look easy . . . and made the food sound delicious!
1
Finally something like Din Tai Fung on the East Coast.
4
The best dumplings in New York are at Kings County Imperial in Williamsburg. Brooklyn. It is a fairly new and very popular Chinese food restaurant that for some reason Pete Wells refuses to review.
1
Great. Another French toast recipe for me to try. I'm thinking either a lemon custard where the toasts are topped with maple syrup, or maybe a banana custard topped with lingonberry compote.
I think that Chinese dumplings should stuffed with beef bourguignon and blanquette de veau. And sole parisienne. More authentique that way....
Thinking that I may have had just bad luck in HK, I waited for the queues for Tim Ho Wan in Sydney to subside, which happened a lot sooner than anticipated. I than checked with reviews on TripAdvisor and found that out of the hundreds and hundreds of reviews, about 95% af them were scathing. So, I went to try it out for myself about 2 months after the restaurant had opened. Finding myself in an almost empty restaurant around lunch time, I was disgusted by just about everything I was served. The pork dumplings had a sickly sweet, gooey filling that I just couldn't force down my threat, the other dim sums were of similarly poor quality.
We are possibly spoiled by the hundreds of fabulous, inexpensive yum Cha restaurants in Sydney, but I wouldn't go back to Tim Ho Wan, if it was the only Chinese restaurant in town.