Today's Lunch: December 28, 2013

Nick and I got up early to head out to the City to take his grandma to dim sum.  We went to Koi Palace, which has a very good reputation for dim sum, but holy moly, we waited for 79 minutes and I'm pretty sure we didn't take that long to eat our meal. Whatever the case, we never see Nick's San Francisco grandma so it was worth the wait.  We got a lot of the normal stuff, but a few new things too.  I tried to take pictures of the things that we normally don't order.  I know that these pictures can all start looking the same.

This little dumpling was full of bay scallops and shrimp.  I think these are
steamed like most dumplings, but then they crisped up the bottom of the
dumpling to make it crunchy.  It was pretty tasty. 

We've gotten these before because Nick likes them, but I
don't think that I've ever taken a picture.  It is a little ball
of fried taro root stuffed with some sort of meat.  Taro isn't
my favorite, but these were pretty flavorful and the external
shell was crispy and flaky. 

Tofu skin wrapped dumpling.  

I'm not sure what to call this in English, but it is a thin noodle
wrapped around fried fish.  The standard wraps are pretty thin
and filled with beef or shrimp. 

Boiled goose intestines.  You dip them in the spicy brown
sauce in the back of the picture.  I eat this stuff, but it's not
really my favorite. It has a crunchy and chewy at the same
time and doesn't really hold much flavor on its own.  I just
have a hard time getting past the idea that it's an intestine. 

Crispy noodles with giant clam.

Fried soft tofu.

While we were waiting for our table there was a man who
was making Dragon's Beard candy.  I had never heard of
this before, but they look like little silk worms so I didn't want
to eat them.  The man who makes them starts out with a
semi-hard block of  brown sugar.  He pulled the sugar similarly to how
you would make noodles.  After many, many pulls, the sugar
becomes very fine and stringy. To keep the strands from sticking
together, he pulled the sugar in something that looked like powdered
sugar, which is what gives it the white color.  Inside the roll
are chopped peanuts.