Hei La Moon – Chinatown

As you might be aware, the Chinese lunar new year is set to begin this week, ushering in the Year of the Dog. To mark the occasion, Yue and I Made a trip out to Chinatown this morning for dim sum at Hei La Moon. Hei La Moon is located just across the street from Boston’s iconic Chinatown Gate, and boasts several floors of banquet hall-style seating. Uniformed servers push around carts laden with meats, pastries and dumplings around the hall, and dishes are served a la carte. It’s a sprawling space, but make sure to come early, because it does fill up fast. The building has a parking garage on top, and diners can get validated parking on the weekends, meaning people come from far and wide for an authentic dim sum experience.

Because of the way dim sum service works, you’re able to try all manner of dishes, though the tastes tend to run more towards sweet or savory than spicy. Yue’s favorite dish is chicken feet, and though I was a bit apprehensive the first time we tried them, they’re starting to grow on me. They can be a bit bony, and eating around the bones and spitting them out can take some getting used to. We also ordered peppery pork short ribs with taro, which I think were my favorite in the spread. The flavor serves as a good contrast to the sweeter dishes we ordered, and the bite-sized cubes are easy to pop into your mouth.

Also in the spread was yuba, tofu skin, wrapped around a filling of pork, shrimp, and bamboo shoots, the latter to give the dish a little extra texture. Though they may not look like much, they’re plenty filling. The dish in the foreground of the first photo are rolls of fish tofu with crab meat in the center, garnished with sweet corn. That one was a dish neither Yue nor I had tried before, but it certainly delivered a subtle but interesting flavor, kind of like a heavy, deep-fried sushi.

The egg tarts are actually a dish from Portugal, but due to Portugal’s connection to Macau, have been incorporated into the dim sum spread. The heavy pastry crust and creamy egg filing help clear the palate between dishes. We also ordered shu mai, a kind of steamed dumpling stuffed with pork. These, I think, are what tipped me over from just being merely full to staving off a food coma all afternoon. Worth it.

We ended our meal on the sweet side, with a bowl of coconut milk, watermelon chunks and tapioca pearls, and steamed buns filled with duck egg, butter, and cheese. The natural saltiness of the duck egg was offset by the sweetness of the bun itself and the flavors of the cheese and butter.

We left feeling completely stuffed, and it took a walk back through Chinatown and then all the way down through Back Bay to stave off the post-meal lethargy, but we’re ready to ring in the Year of the Dog.

-Connor

Kaze Shabu Shabu – Chinatown

It had been a while since the last time Yue and I had eaten in Chinatown. Last night, we were spending some time in a cafe near Boston Common to get out of the cold, so we decided it was a good night for some hot pot, and took a walk down Boylston Street to see what we could find. We ended up in Kaze Shabu Shabu, tucked a little ways down Essex Street, not far from the Orange Line Chinatown stop.

Kaze Shabu Shabu serves up Japanese-style hot pot, which offer more variety for broth than a traditional Chinese or Mongolian hot pot would. I went with a savory Japanese curry-style broth, while Yue stuck with a more familiar Chinese herbal. The menu offerings were vast and varied, offering up plenty of meats, seafood and vegetable options. As any canny reader can assume, Yue and I aren’t remotely vegetarian, so the initial offering of veggies were enough for us, and we opted for meat plates. Yue ordered beef, while I went for a combination of beef and pork.

For the benefit of any readers who haven’t tried hot pot, it’s served by placing a large pan full of broth on a burner set into the table. The broth boils, and the diners put in the vegetables/meat/etc., and once those have been cooked in the broth, they’re taken out and put in a smaller bowl, where they can cool in a marinade of soy and barbecue sauces, along with a mixture of chopped garlic, scallions, peppers, and vinegar. Once it cools enough to not scald your tongue, it’s ready to eat.

What makes hot pot so fun is how much it’s tailored to each diner’s tastes. If you want miso soup but your partner wants beef broth, it’s cool! Don’t like how napa cabbage gets limp when it’s boiled? No problem, just don’t put it in! Are you in the mood for some meat but your friend is a vegetarian? No need to worry, there’s a handy divider in the pot to keep everything separate! Yue and I tend to have similar tastes in food, which is great, but it never hurts to have the option to cater more to your tastes.

Kaze Shabu Shabu is hardly the only hot pot place in Chinatown (actually, I think there are about three others on the same block), but of the ones I’ve tried, I think it’s my favorite so far. The portions are just the right size to not leave you feeling too full, but it’s certainly enough to satisfy one’s appetite. It also seems to be far less crowded than the other hot pot places nearby, and not having to wait for a table is always a plus as far as I’m concerned. If you’re looking for something to warm you up for the next spate of cold weather we’re due for, give Kaze Shabu Shabu a shot.

-Connor