Brenda’s Early Birthday Treat at China Max

For those of you who have been following this…I’ve added a few more categories in the ratings section that I’ll start to implement with this post.

Anyways, Brenda has never had dim sum before and I figure it’d be a nice way to treat her out for her 21st birthday. Again there were several other dim sum places I could have taken her too that would have offered more of the traditional experience of picking dishes from passing carts. However, I still believe the food here is better and to me, the food usually outweighs the experience. If you look a few post earlier….I’ve already done a post on this place already but there were a few dishes that I ordered this time that weren’t ordered in the previous post. On this particular day, there was only one other table being served so the service was impeccably fast. We were swiftly brought to our table and the hot tea and small dish of chili sauce placed on our table.

Well since I’ve recently talked about this place…I’ll only post and talk about the dishes that weren’t ordered last time. You can go back bout 2 or 3 posts to catch the dishes.

This was the first dish that came out. As you can see, Brenda and I were quiet hungry(there were two other pastries on this dish before I remembered to take a picture). I always think that eating dim sum is a guilty pleasure since its so tasty but greasy enough to clog arteries and warrant some serious exercise. This BBQ puff pastry is no exception. Savory BBQ pork wrapped in buttery puff pastry with an egg wash and sesame seeds on top.

 Shrimp wrapped in rice noodles with a sweet soy sauce. Brenda thought it was delicious and couldn’t get enough of it. Ditto for me too. THere is a place back in San Francisco that makes fresh rice porridge, Chinese doughnuts and this rice noodled wrapped with just bout anything you want. I forget the name but its on Broadway and Stockton bout 2 or three shops over from the giant pet shop in Chinatown. I’m sorry I don’t remember the name but pretty much every shop sign in Chinatown is in Chinese and I can’t read so I just remember where the place is. I don’t go to many place in Chinatown since my family has found its favorites already so its not tough remembering where all the places we want to go are.

 

I’m not the biggest fan of fried shrimp balls but since Brenda and I both shrimp fans and she hasn’t tried it before I thought we should give it a go anyways just to try it here. It wasn’t bad, I just don’t like the texture of ground up shrimp. I’d rather eat a whole shrimp. The sweet and sour sauce that came with it was a little watery as well.

 For dessert we decided to get custard buns. The flavor was very good…a light milky sweet and the texture was creamy even though it was room temperature. Finding custard buns that maintain that creamy texture even at room temperature is tough; too often do I find ones with a crumbly unappetizing texture. The creamy texture is a must when you are taking these on the go for snacking which I used to do a lot as a kid.

 

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Average meal price: ~ $3-$4 for each dish so it depends how much you eat and how many people you go with

Food:awesome for the taste-buds not so much if you are trying to keep up a figure

Ambiance: 2

Service:we were 1 of two tables being served on this lazy Wednesday

Kid-friendliness:I’ve seen plenty of kids here on several occasion but I’m not sure if they enjoy dim sum

Cleanliness:quite clean

Overall:3

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4698 Convoy Street #C101, San Diego, Ca 92111~ tel: 858-650-3333~ 11am-11pm

http://www.chinamaxsandiego.com/index.html