Hill O' Beans
After a long, long aimless walk over the weekend I found myself in Chelsea so I decided it was time for soup dumplings at Grand Sichuan International. It was a little after three in the afternoon and the restaurant was mostly empty (they should have early bird specials!). At one table in the back a woman was folding napkins in preparation for the evening crowd. At another table this woman was snipping the ends off green beans. She didn't get too far by the time I left.
As always the soup dumplings were excellent. I also had the double-cooked pork. When I ordered the waitress said "Lean, right?". I didn't hear her at first so she repeated "Lean, not fatty, right?" She smiled when I said I preferred fatty. I didn't realize that meant like 50 percent fat, but it was delicious.
Unrelated: Someone at work who read this site said yesterday that I was weird. She repeated that accusation when we were talking about roadkill later in the day and I said I owned a copy of Flattened Fauna. Later, three people said I should take a vacation. I would like a vacation right now but I am saving my pennies and vacation time for trips to Alaska and Minnesota later in the year.
hmm, sichuan place with soup dumplings? they couldn't be that good, could they?
Posted by: tien | January 06, 2005 at 09:26 AM
What cuisine do soup dumplings belong to? For some reason it did strike me that they didn't belong but I don't know enough about Chinese cooking to know why. They are very delicious though.
Posted by: joe | January 06, 2005 at 10:16 AM
shanghaineese, hence joe's shanghai. i mean, it's even a joe establishment. sichuan is known more for its spicy food.
Posted by: tien | January 06, 2005 at 03:37 PM
The soup dumplings at Grand Sichuan were pretty good when we ate there. That is, they were if you like soup dumplings.
Actually, the more fat, the better the double cooked pork. What you really want is twice cooked bacon, or better yet, twice cooked fat back. We love the twice cooked bacon at Wu Lian Ye, and now that we have our own supply of pig fat, we can make our own 100% pure fat version. Yum!
Posted by: Kaleberg | January 06, 2005 at 11:47 PM
It seemed to me that the pork was the same cut as for bacon, just not smoked. Do you raise your own pigs?
Must try Joe's Shanghai.
Posted by: joe | January 07, 2005 at 02:46 PM
Glad to hear about your future vaca plans! MN State Fair is the 10 days before labor day.,
Posted by: ann | January 10, 2005 at 06:00 PM
Hmmm, the Wisconsin State Fair is from Aug 4-14. That may be too long a stretch for me to be away, but I may have to consider it.
Posted by: joe | January 12, 2005 at 12:04 AM