Okay, here's an update. I wanted to write about Chinatown restaurants, but I could only find Golden Unicorn as the dim sum place, so I would like to write about dim sum place in Chinatown, in general.


There are a few dim sum (Chinese tea with side orders of spring rolls and dumplings which waitresses bring to you table with a cart full of different dishes) place in Chinatown.

Gum pho (Elizabeth street south of Canal),
Silver palace (Canal and Bowery) and another little one just next to it (the name of the store has three alphabets like FGL or something like that), and Golden Unicorn (East Broadway).

Of four places I know, I think Gum pho looks the best, has the most variety in food, and largest. The next comes Silver palace and Golden Unicorn. There's not much difference in terms of price. It's probablly about $10/person depending on what you order. First, you sit in a big table you can share with others or a small table for yourself and they'll bring you tea. You can ask for jasmine, regular black tea, or chrythansamum/ mum (?) tea. Chyrythansamum tea has floral smell like Jasmine and it's sweet. Other tea has no sugar. Waitresses don't speak English but that's fine. When the cart comes by your table just look interested in what they have, and they'll show you what's in their cart. They'll take the lid off the food and you point them which one you want. They will put a stamp on your card. You get at max 4 little pieces that costs $3 or so, so the money isn't that much wasted in case you don't enjoy one dish. In addition, you can order from menu, but I would not recommend it if it's your first time. Most dish, including things like fried rice is on these cart that goes around you. And if you are visiting Chinatown from out of the town, you should enjoy something other than American Chinese food that you can only enjoy here in Chinatown for a real good price.

So what kind of food would you be served? For me, it's not like "oh my god!" but more like, "yes, it's yummy." But I've been told too many times that I'm a critical Japanese chef. I know how to cook many of dim sum dish too, and I had a chinese boyfriend who was fat and took me to many good restaurants in chinatown. And if I don't like it, I don't return there. Golden unicorn is the one I did not have urge to return the second time. Golden Unicorn sounds pretty fancy, so I was excited to go there. But tt was nothing that's so different from other places in chinatown. It's same dim sum food, nothing extraordinary from others. I would rather go to Gum phon because it's closer to the center of chinatown as opposed to across bowery closer to less touristic part of chinatown. I mean, this is the entrance to the immigrant section of Chinatown. You will notice the difference. If you are too tired to walk from canal street where many fake stuffs are sold and where tourists go, stay around there. There's nothing you'll miss by going to other closer dim sum place.

Anyways, what would you be served at dim sum in general? A lot of meat stuff, mainly pork and shrimp.

1) Steamed rice noodle with shrimp, pork, or deepfried bread. This is usually my starter. You dip into sweetened soy sauce. I guess it could be compared with savory crepes or steamed spring rolls.

2) Spring rolls You can have either deep fried. The wrapper can be either made of wheat or soy. There's a cooked spring roll with soy wrapper, and I like this the most. It has pork, shrimp and shiitake filling.

3) Deep fried shimp ball with crab craw. This is my favorite. It's like deep fried mozzarella stick, but instead of cheese, you have ground shimp meat with bread crum batter that's crisp. You can dip in mayonaise or hot sause.

4) siu-mai or pork dumpling. This one looks like a small cyliner or a meatball. Eat as is or with mustard and soy sauce.

5) shrimp or pork dumpling. This one looks like gyoza in Japanese restaurants. For shrimp dumpling, it has a transparent wrapper, and the taste is elegant. Pork dumpling can be either fried or steamed.

6) steamed bun with pork. Instead of baking the bread, the dough is steamed. Meat inside is pretty juicy.

4) stuffed eggplant or pepper with meat. The stuffing is made with pork, shrimp, and shrimp. the stuffed vegetables are soaked in soy-sauce based sauce and it's juicy with pork fat ( as in bacon).


5) Radish pancake. It's a panfried white squares. It's not greasy. Sometimes, you need to walk to the frying station with a card to get it. It's served with hoi-sin sauce. It may sound bad, but it's one of my favorite food that you can almost never get outside Chinatown.


7) On weekends, there may be specials like cooked clams with soy sauce. But I don't like it too much.

8) chicken feet. I leave my chinese friend to eat it. It looks too grotesque for me even it may taste good.

9) Chinese cabbage. As you can see, there's alot of dishes with meat with little vegetables. Vegetables are chopped and used in small quantities to spice up the flavor like scallions and gingers. But otherwise, there's very little vegetables. so if you feel like you want to give your stomach a break or a salad substitute, then chinese cabbage is good. It's steamed but it's crunchy. Eat with a little sauce on the side.

10) Rice porrige. This may not be that popular among non-asian, but I like it as a part of my brunch (the breakfast side of brunch.) For other rice dishes, there's sticky rice steamed in lotus leaf with pork, pine nuts, shiitake and dried shrimp. It's heavy, so don't try to eat it in the later part of the meal. There's also fried rice, which is nothing special.

7) Mango Pudding, fresh tofu with syrup, egg tart (custard or creme burlee without burn in a pie shell), sponge cake for dessert with tea.



Recommended: Yes

Kid Friendliness: Yes
Vegetarian Friendly: No
Notes, Tips or Menu Recommendations fried shrimp with crab, siu-mai (cylindrical dumpling), rice-noodle with shrimp in the middle, mango pudding, fresh tofu with syrup
Best Suited For: Kids and Families