b Happy Sumo Food Journal: August 2006

Friday, August 04, 2006

Kings Land Chinese Seafood Restaurant , 2200 West Alameda Avenue, Denver, CO

Yum Yum, Dim Sum!

Today we satisfied our dim sum cravings at our favorite, Kings Land Chinese Seafood Restaurant. The other place is good too, but it doesn’t beat Kings Land, especially since they don’t have the signature green beans that we all love.

So we started out with the green beans, and followed those up with various dim sum: Har Gau (Thoy’s favorite, the tiny shrimp dumplings with the translucent wrappers), siu mai (my favorite, the little shrimp-pork-mushroom dumplings with the carrot in the middle), Potstickers (the seared pork dumplings that Marnie favors), gooey rice pancakes with shrimp in the middle snipped with scissors (we miss you Mike and always eat these in honor of you!!!), seafood dumplings with shrimp and scallops, shrimp and leek dumplings, eggplant stuffed with shrimp topped with a black bean sauce, bean curd yummies stuffed with chicken and veggies (the brown things), and these lovely little shrimp balls coated with glutinous rice, that were something new today we tried on a whim.

As usual, we ate heartily (some of us ordered rice on the side) and drank lots of tea to aid in the digestion. The two happy dim sum eaters with their chopsticks are Kathy on the left and Thoy on the right. No dessert today. We also ordered an entire fried flounder and totally demolished it! I apologize that I didn't get a picture of it before we killed it, but you can see that potentially it was very lovely. It was floating in a sweet brown sauce and topped with chopped green onions and jalapenos - Wow! There was nothing but bones left when were finished with it and I won't publish the picture I took of the skeleton - the waiter who knows us was staring suspicially at us anyway, because we have been coming there as a pack since 2003 and this is the first time we've pulled out a camera and started snapping photos. Anyway, I highly recommend this local favorite which came dangerously close to being a victim of WalMart sprawl - all these successful businesses started and run by immigrants were going to be razed for a Super WalMart before the neighbors and customers went ricky-tick.

Overall Rating - 4 Sumos

New Saigon Restaurant, Denver

We had good food and boba drinks at New Saigon restaurant recent, on South Federal Boulevard in the Vietnamese area of town. New Saigon has been around since at least the 80’s, so they must be cooking it up right. Location: 630 Federal Boulevard. Me, Eric, Thoy and Mitch started out with Vietnamese Eggrolls. Usually I eat the pork version but Thoy wanted shrimp, and they are remarkably similar. Grab a piece of eggroll, put it on a lettuce leaf, add bean sprouts, carrot, cucumber, mint leaves and cilantro, and roll it up into a kind of "Vietnamese Burrito." Dunk it in the fish sauce and enjoy.

I had the Combination Noodle Bowl, which has a lot of the same elements as the eggroll dish: A bowl of rice noodles with carrot, cucumber, bean sprouts, cilantro and mint leaves, that is topped with perfectly grilled marinated chicken, beef and shrimp, then ground peanutes. Served with fish sauce. It was really good, a lot of food. Order it if you are really hungry. It's a total explosion of a lot of different flavors in your mouth.

Mitch had a bowl of the Vietnamese soup. It looked really good, but I didn't get a review from him so I have to go by what I saw. A huge bowl of broth chock full of noodles and vegetables; there was a piece of fried yam sticking up from the side, that's what you see in the image.

Here's Eric's review of his dish and an image: "I don't remember the name of the dish but it was deep-fried scallops with peppers and onions. It was pretty good, nice and tasty, good sized portion. The worst part was that I took half of it in a doggie bag, but in my rush to go home on Friday I left it at work. I was really looking forward to eating it again for dinner."

Here's Thoy's review of her dish and an image: "Some Seafood Dish - Scallops, Shrimp and Lobster sautéed with mix vegetables - presents well, but a okay dish. More like a Chinese dish than Vietnamese. Would probably be a great dish for someone whose not Asian. I may have liked it better if I had ordered it spicy... I love spicy Asian dishes."

After lunch we ordered boba drinks to go - I had the passionfruit with coconut jellies, Mitch had coconut pineapple, Eric had something else fruity, and Thoy had her signature smelly Durian fruit, which I tried again. Makes the car smell like gasoline. The first time I tried it I can only say "Onion Smoothy." I tried it again, because I understand that it must be an acquired taste, and it was a little better, but still an acquired taste.

Overall rating - 4 sumos

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Wow it looks like someone reads our blog other than us! In response to your comment, Alan, we are 4 friends who either work or worked at Janus Capital in Denver. The other 3 members are still there, I jumped ship and moved out to Sacramento to run a beauty supply business. But I still enjoy eating out, just not anywhere of note.