MartinW

The Twin Cities of Minnesota have at least 3 places I know of for dim sum, but the best I have had by far is Yangtze restaurant in St. Louis Park (on the west side of Minneapolis). It is a little hard to find. Use a GPS if you have it. It is located in a strip mall at the end of a dead end road. They only have it on weekends from 10 am to 2 pm. They have the carts that they push through the dining area and you choose from what they have. Sometimes you have to wait to get the dish you want, but just ask the lady and she will come by the next time they put it on her cart. Their phoenix talons (chicken feet) are cooked perfectly and the sauce is good. I also recommend the bbq pork buns, doufu hua with ginger syrup, pork riblets with a black bean sauce, luo bo gao (steamed, then sliced and pan fried daikon cake), the steamed shrimp dumplings and the ones with shrimp mixed with pork. Really you can try almost everything and you won't be disappointed. The only dish I didn't care for was one made of tripe. It had a little too much flavor if you know what I mean. I have had tripe before, but it wasn't quite so pungent. Also be prepared for the fact that some of the beef and pork dishes might be a little chewy to typical American preferences and have some bone, fat and gristle. Most Chinese like to work for their meat and don't mind bones and cartilage (my wife calls cartilage crispy bone, and enjoys eating it). The ladies who push the carts are very friendly and helpful (maybe it helped that I was there with my Chinese wife and her parents, and I spoke a tiny bit of Chinese. I even was complimented for eating that kind of food and for my chopstick skills). The prices are reasonable for what you get I feel. We paid around $80 for 4 adults once all the dishes were added up. I am a big eater and I was stuffed and we had a few leftovers to take home. They get a lot of Chinese customers (which is a good sign to me), but we never have had trouble getting a table. It is a lot bigger inside than the outside appearance indicates. Give it a try if you ever get to the Minneapolis area.

Hello, I am 43, married, a new dad, (my son is 9 months old) and an avid home cook. My wife is Chinese (from Shanghai originally), and so I am learning how to cook a lot of the dishes she misses from home. I enjoy cooking many different types of cuisines. However, my major area of interests right now are in learning to prepare dishes from various Asian cuisines (Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean and Japanese primarily), cooking the south German food of my youth (my mother came from Swabia), learning more modernist techniques (besides pots, pans, knives and many standard kitchen tools such as a food processor and a stand mixer, I have an immersion circulator, a whipping siphon and a small collection of hydrocolloids and some transglutaminase, etc.) and preparing homemade baby food for my son. I was single until 2013 and live in a very small town (pop. 812), so eating well meant cooking for myself most of the time. Now I prepare about 75% of the meals we eat at home, and my many years of cooking and being interested in food are coming in quite handy. I look forward to learning more from all of you and also contributing when I think it will be useful. Martin