Fried pork dumplings Photo by Rachel Weatherly
If you've spent time in Hong Kong, or if Cantonese cuisine is your BFF, this is the place for you. The food is as authentic as it gets, with good variety and great service. The convenient location (formerly home to MaMa Wok) in a shopping center off Broad Street has lots of parking and cozy booths, in addition to family tables.
The menu has both traditional and westernized dishes and a separate dim sum section. That is where I started. Dim sum was my after-school snack growing up in Honolulu. The char siu bao (roast pork bun) was perfect, with light dough and no gumminess — tasty and filling.
There are plenty of good, westernized dishes, but the traditional ones are, to me, the real treasure. It will take months to try all of the items that tempt me, but I will keep persevering. I am a sucker for well-fried food, and the crispy shrimp roll appetizer was spot on. I couldn't persuade Handsome Hubby to go for the cold jellyfish, but I was thrilled to see it. He did order orange beef and found it to be unremarkable.
The next visit was a dim sum lunch with a friend. We ordered a steamed scallop and shrimp dumpling, shrimp and mushrooms in a tofu skin wrapping, a deep-fried taro and meat dumpling, and a chiu chow dumpling. Conversation came to a complete halt. The taro dumpling had a lacy, fried crust with creamy (not gummy) taro and a wonderful meat filling. The tofu skin was delectable, but the chiu chow dumpling with peanuts, shrimp and pork caused my friend to declare she could have eaten an entire plate of just those.
Queen's Dim Sum is well worth the stop. The restaurant uses no MSG and offers wonderful lunch specials. If you are homesick for Hong Kong, this place will make you smile. If you've never been there, it gives some wonderful insight into that cuisine.
Queen's Dim Sum
7801 W. Broad St., 672-8989
Prices: Appetizers start at $1.50; lunch specials are about $5; entrées range from $8 to $16.50 (except for the Peking duck, which is $27).
Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
