Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Ping's Seafood

01-09 Ping Restaurant01-09 Ping Restaurant01-09 Ping Restaurant01-09 Ping Restaurant
Everyone has their favorite dim sum place in New York, one of our regular haunts is Ping's Seafood down on Mott Street. It's not the most divine, but it's pretty good and a particularly indulgent choice for a Wednesday lunch. Dim sum often starts early in the morning, on into lunchtime and is seldom available after 2 or 3 in the afternoon. It's a bustling type of eating, first because it's best to go with a larger group so you can sample more dishes. And then the atmosphere - passing carts filled with a variety of choices, waiters rushing back and forth pouring tea, clearing plates and the shared round tables.
Ping's Seafood, 22 Mott Street near Mosco

1 comment:

Andrew in Alabama said...

OK, you have done it again. Besides sushi, dim sum is my absolute favorite food in the world.

If you will indulge me, I'd love to tell you about my first dim sum experience. I was about 9 or 10 years old and my parents took the family to New York to experience some of the culture. They decided that "lunch in Chinatown" would be a good experience for us. Keep in mind that I had grown up in Birmingham, Alabama where egg rolls and chow mein were some pretty exotic stuff.

We ended up at one of the huge dim sum palaces in Chinatown. The place was an utter zoo, and we could hardly communicate with anyone, not only because of the language barrier, but because the place was very very noisy. Definitely not like restaurants back home. They seated us at a big, round table with another family who were Chinese. They spoke no English, and we spoke no Chinese.

The food carts started coming around and the language barrier instantly went away, as we were able to point at things that looked good. I feel sure that we played it pretty safe, but I can still remember the taste and feel of what I later learned to be har gow the first time I tried it. To this day, tasting har gow takes me back 30 or so years to that day in Chinatown.

Other vivid memories of that day include the elderly Chinese gentleman across the table from us daintily eating spareribs, removing the bone from his mouth with his chopsticks, and making a little bone pile right on the table! I had never seen such a thing! Of course it was fine since at the end of the meal, the plastic tablecloth was simply lifted off the table, bundled up, and another identical tablecloth was ready to go underneath.

I'll next get to have some dim sum on a trip to Las Vegas next month (yes I have already planned most of our meals there) but until then you have whetted my appetite quite nicely. Thanks.