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| - After reading all the positive reviews on Yelp, we decided to give China King (or Blue Sky Seafood - translation of their Chinese name) a try.
On the plus side, I have to say the servers were very eager - always asking us if there was anything else they could get us (though can't guarantee that they'd be equally attentive on a busy weekend). While a couple of the dishes were solid (spare ribs, taro puff), the rest (including standards like "har gow") fell short. Overall the experience was disappointing.
A big dim sum pet peeve of mine is lack of freshness. Less than 10 seconds after we sat down, a steaming cart was pushed over from it's resting place to our table. My question is how long has the cart been sitting around? We'd find out soon enough.
From the steam cart we ordered (all $1.95):
- spare ribs in black bean sauce: solid
- "har gow" (shrimp dumpling): dumpling skin was too thick, shrimp lacked crunch of freshness
- chive & shrimp dumpling: skin stuck to the paper in the steamer indicating that it had been sitting around for a while
- tripe with ginger and green onion: seasoning was overpowering
From the bake & deep-fry cart we ordered (all $1.95):
- "ham sui gok" (deep-fried glutinous rice balls filled with pork; interestingly, direct translation is salty water pastry) - this was completely soaked with oil
- "wu gok" (deep-fried taro filled with pork) - nice flaky "bird's-nest"exterior and tasty pork filling
It was doubtful whether these were hot as they were just sitting on top of a cart with no heating element. When we asked, the server offered to fetch us hot versions from the kitchen. She came back very quickly so my guess is that these were sitting under heat lamps.
When we overheard the server telling the neighboring table that their cheung fun (rice noodle with filling) would take a couple of minutes because the chef was stretching it (like pasta), we decided to order one too:
- rice noodle filled with minced beef (same stuff as the beef ball) with a specially cooked soy sauce $2.95 - cheung fun was silky smooth but a bit on the oily side
In addition, we also ordered poached kai lan (aka Chinese broccoli) $4.50 - generous plate of veg that's been par-boiled, tossed in oil and then drizzled with oyster sauce. This was again too oily and the thick stems were not peeled as they should've been.
For dessert, we had the steamed egg custard buns. This was not on any of the carts but they will steam it to order when asked. Our server warned us that it'd take 15 min. Sadly, it wasn't worth the wait. The skin of the buns were cracked - the dough was obviously not kneaded well enough for the gluten to hold it together. The filling was more coconuty rather than eggy.
If you're not too picky on your dim sum and China King is convenient for you, then we'd say give it a go.
As for us, we'll continue to explore other dim sum options in Phoenix...and for a sure thing, we'd recommend China Chan on the Westside.
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