Best thing I ate: There’s a new dim sum power player in Irvine

Dim sum is one of my all-time favorite meals. It’s a style of dining that originated in Canton, now Guangzhou, in southern China, where my family is from. It involves a series of small dishes, including dumplings, typically eaten for breakfast and...

Photo by Edwin Goei When people ask me where to find vegetarian dim sum, I tell them it’d be easier to locate an Indian steakhouse or a healthy KFC. Dim sum, by its nature, is not vegetarian. Even if you avoid all the usual dumplings that have...

Dim sum at its best is a total-immersion experience — the quest for a number, the long wait in the restaurant lobby and then the explosion into the dining room itself, likely to be the largest enclosed space you have stepped into that month — an...

Barbecue-pork-filled buns at Tim Ho Wan. Photo by Edwin Goei A Taiwanese co-worker had something to tell me: He said he’d just gone to a new restaurant I’d be interested in. But before he even got the chance to pull the business card out of his...

If we're in a recession, someone forgot to tell the Chinese. Yesterday, the dim sum crowd at New Capital in Rowland Heights was as crazy as always.  Judging by the number of people milling about outside waiting for a table, this go-to place for...