Week 15: Capital Capers

Week 15 of new things took us down to the state's capital to celebrate my son's girlfriend's (GF)  birthday. We went to a dim sum restaurant, which was a completely new experience for me. GF explained to us that dim sum is traditionally served mid-morning (10 am) after an early (6 am) breakfast. She said that it's especially popular with older gentlemen who get together to gossip and enjoy it with a pot of tea! Dim sum is a Cantonese specialty in the southern region of China, which includes Hong Kong. When we arrived for our 11 am reservation, the restaurant was already full.

This sheet of paper is left on your table. You can see where the servers marked our bill with blue ink, based on what we chose. Carts are wheeled around to each table, where they pause to see if you want anything from that cart. You have to be quick because they run out of items and just refill the carts with new things. I think the chef makes 30 different dishes, so once something is gone, it's not made again that day. I would have been intimidated without GF there because the servers didn't seem to speak much English and speed seemed to be important.

To be honest, I'm not sure what all we ate. Most of it contained shrimp or pork. The little pie in the back was Xiao Long Bao - a mini steamed pork bun that had soup inside and a sliced carrot on the bottom. We were handed chopsticks when we were seated, but being Caucasian, I was offered silverware, which I gladly accepted. Good thing because can you imagine trying to eat any of those things without cutting into it first? I'm just not adept enough with the chopsticks to hold them while taking a bite. And temperature wise, those baskets retain heat because everything was piping hot, so I was glad I didn't attempt to just pop the whole thing in my mouth.

These were some sort of fish balls. I had GF ask the server if they were hot (spicy) and the answer was that they were just a little bit spicy. My husband and I took one and just before he took a bite, I tried it and had to immediately warn him to stop because they were quite spicy (on a scale of 1-10, I'd give them a 5). He can't have anything spicy due to a medical condition, but I enjoyed them.

Dessert time! The white blocks were a coconut 'pudding' and the orange was a mango pudding. Very tasty! We also had baked custard buns, which were sweet, with the meal. All in all, it was a fun experience and very inexpensive. For the 5 of us, our bill was only $50 and we shared about 10 dishes.

After we left, we drove by this field of corn. If you've ever seen any of those Weird Roadside Attractions websites/books, this is listed. It's a tribute to an inventor of hybrid corn. Wack!

 

Our last stop of the day was at this brewery. S.I.P. stands for Somewhere In Particular. The skeleton hanging on the sign is the mascot and appears on their glasses. The tasting room is housed in a historical home, with the brewery built onto the back. We had lovely weather, so we sat outside in their beer garden at picnic tables, played some cornhole, and enjoyed a cold craft beer. I had the Oedipus Complex and my husband tried the Harry Porter & the Cocoa Crux. All in all, a fun time was had by all and we were happy to celebrate a very sweet girl's birthday.