tasty chinatown!

Saturday was the annual Taste of Chinatown festival, so Lisa and I each strapped on a feed bag, met up with her husband, RJ, and walked through the streets of Chinatown with our mouths open. To quote Lisa, it was "delish!"

Our first stop was somewhere along Baxter Street, and, according to the map of the festival, wasn't actually a participant in the event. Whatever, it was still tasty! We ate these FABULOUS steamed spring rolls with shrimp and bean sprouts and a tolerable hint of cilantro in this gorgeous dipping sauce... for a dollar.

Yeah, see, that's the beauty of the Taste of Chinatown -- every dish is either a dollar or two dollars. Can't go anywhere near wrong with that.

After that, we hit Vegetarian Dim Sum House which, when you look at the menu online, claims to have been serving Beef w/Rice Noodles, Shark Fin Soup and Mango Pudding. (An odd offering for Vegetarian Dim Sum House, but hell, it's Chinatown.) I have no idea what we actually ate, but it was fried, and mushy, and melty-in-your-mouthy, and I wanted about seventeen more of them. (They were, in fact, serving mango pudding, as RJ tried to eat it with his lungs. Not a good tactic.)

Then came Sanur, a Malaysian restaurant that I desperately want to go back to. We got a rice/bean/pork/mushroom mixture that had been cooked in a banana leaf. Yumyumyumyumyumyumyumyumyumyummmmmmmmmmmmmm. (That's Malaysian for "I think I'm in love.")

Seventy nine dumplings and fourteen vats of mai fun later, we were stuffed to the gills, when we discovered a Peking duck stand. Lisa got herself a sandwich, and I went across the street and got myself the weirdest, most fabulous desert I've had in a while. It was this sweet little ball, wobbly and solid, like a jello-y paste, covered in coconut and full of sweet peanuts. Oh. My. God. I definitely died and went to heaven.

Now, we didn't really focus on the live performances (although RJ did note that one of the drummers in the seemingly-all-Asian drumming circle was definitely Causcasian), but which of these would you have lined up for a Taste of Chinatown?

1:00 PMPat Cannon's Foot and Fiddle Dance Company: "American Footsteps," American folk dances and their European African and Native American cultural origins. [um, no.]

2:00 PM VariAsians: Asian American A capella group. [sure, yes, definitely]

3:00 PMMexico Beyond Mariachi: The colorful culture of Mexico through song and dance. [um, no.]

4:00 PMDarrah Carr Dance: Champion Irish step dancers. [um, no, lassie.]

5:00 PM Taikoza: Japanese festival "taiko" drums. [this is the one with the white guy in it]

I think they should probably just stick to food. Because that, they definitely know how to do!