TRAVELS (and more) WITH CECILIA BRAINARD: Dim Sum in Chinatown, Los Angeles

Friday, March 14, 2014

Dim Sum in Chinatown, Los Angeles

We had Dim Sum in Chinatown, Los Angeles, at the Ocean Seafood Restaurant, 750 N. Hill Street, LA, CA 90012. Our favorites include: siomai, siobao, roast pork, fried shrimp, shrimp with candied walnuts, spare ribs with black beans, assorted dumplings, and others.

To those who don't know what Dim Sum is, here's how it works. Ladies with carts of various dishes walk around and when they are near your table, you pick what you want. They have a tally sheet on the table and mark it according to your order. Each plate will have say four siomais, and some other dish will have three or four. You select a variety and share. It's very fun. You can order everything from congee soup to custard dessert. If you prefer, you can also order from the menu but you'll have to wait for it to be cooked. The Dim Sum is right there, ready for you.

I am not sure how good Ocean Seafood Restaurant is. It's better than another Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, but the dim sum I had in Toronto was better. I've also had better dim sum in San Francisco. Having said that, I should add that we always go to Ocean Seafood for dim sum. If someone knows of a better place, let me know, cbrainard@aol.com.

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's official website is ceciliabrainarddotcom. She is the award-winning author and editor of 22 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Selected Stories, Vigan and Other Stories, and more. She edited Growing Up Filipino 1, 2, & 3, Fiction by Filipinos in America, Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, and other books.. Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized. Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She has served in the Board of literary arts groups such as PEN, PAWWA (Pacific Asian American Writers West), among others.