The Power of Bao

Photos by Anne Fishbein

Like the offshore winds, or the ZIP codes of independent film producers, the locus of Los Angeles dim sum is forever moving east. Herein, a few of our favorites.

Sea Harbor.As much as it pains me to admit it, the Cantonese restaurants in Vancouver eclipse even our own, vast feeding halls that churn out oceans of shark's-fin soup, flotillas of bao and flocks of barbecued pigeons to the diaspora of Hong Kong's business elite. The best of the Vancouver restaurants, Sun Sui Wah, serves the dim sum to which all other dim sum must be compared. With Sea Harbor, a branch of a Vancouver seafood house ensconced in a former ice cream parlor in Rosemead, the Los Angeles area has its own version of Vancouver-style dim sum — which is to say exotic seafood, properly gooey dumpling skins, and a specialty in chicken knees with pepper-salt — crunchy bits of deep-fried cartilage that may be to Vancouver Asian restaurants what chicken wings are to the taverns of Buffalo. You have to tick off your order on triplicate forms rather than point to things on carts, and the price does tend to add up quickly, but it sometimes seems like a small inconvenience to endure for the privilege of eating food cooked to order rather than wheeled halfway to Shenzen. The soft, slippery stewed sea cucumber is good enough to let even the most squeamish Sinophile understand why the Cantonese value this sea slug so highly. And by no means miss the superb barbecued squab. If you've eaten most of your dim sum in Los Angeles, New York or San Francisco, Sea Harbor's dim sum will seem almost like an evolutionary leap. 3939 Rosemead Blvd., Rosemead, (626) 288-3939.

Seaworld, a crowded wonderland of ziggurats and chandeliers and fish tanks, is somewhat of an underachieverä10

when it comes to its banquet menu, but the dim sum is first-rate, a parade of rolling steam tables, hampers full of rice porridge, trays of glistening baked pork buns, and segmented carts that conceal chile-spiked stews of tripe and various organic tubes. Here are fried crullers wrapped in slippery rice noodles; rich constructs of whitefish braised with Virginia ham; and fat, pale dumplings stuffed with an intensely green mince of vegetables, with shrimp and pork forcemeats, and fresh scallops.

Griddle carts circulate the room, preceded by wafts of their sweetly fragrant smoke, ready to grill to order rich squares of taro; fish cake-stuffed bell peppers; chewy rice noodles spiked with scallions and dried shrimp. But Seaworld's strength, at least in the mornings, is its deep-fried dishes: squid, shrimp and tofu, sizzled golden brown and sprinkled with pepper, salt and minced garlic. 8118 E. Garvey Ave., Rosemead, (626) 288-2898.

A panoramic view of the 888 kitchen, as it unfolds (Photos by Anne Fishbein)

888, which anchors a Rosemead mall, is a terrifically elegant Chiu Chow banquet hall at night, the place to go when you are in the mood for the braised goose, the shrimp balls and the tart, pungent soups that are characteristic of the cuisine. During the day, though, 888 serves a fancy version of traditional dim sum, and on weekend mornings the crowd is so vast that it actually seems to recede into the horizon. 888 seems at its best with slightly unusual dumplings, steamed concoctions of fish, black mushrooms, bits of dried seafood and vegetables, and I love its vibrantly pink steamed shrimp dumplings, the Chinese broccoli and the sliced geoduck cooked to order in a boil cart, and the sesame-scented jellyfish salad. 8450 E. Valley Blvd., Rosemead, (626) 573-1888.

New Capital's chief selling point is, frankly, its egalitarian pricing structure, just $1.60 for practically everything on offer from sticky rice steamed in lotus leaves to small platters of fried shrimp. Even more than at other dim sum restaurants, the pressure to eat, pay and leave can be overwhelming. But the quality at New Capital is remarkably high, the food remarkably fresh — especially if you manage to snag an order of the fried pork-stuffed sticky-rice capsules called ham sui gok, which are as irresistible as hot doughnuts, from a waitress passing by with a tray. You'll find no elaborate carts here, no costly shark's-fin soup, no shaved geoduck boiled to order, but you will find on almost every table, even at 11 in the morning, a platter (ordered off a wall sign) of the cheapest Dungeness crab in town. 7540 E. Garvey Ave., Rosemead, (626) 288-1899.

Full House. Although it occupies an elegant space in one of the priciest corners of Arcadia, Full House is almost a throwback to the primordial L.A. teahouses: extraordinarily inexpensive, populated with a clientele that seems at least a decade older than that of the other restaurants, and specializing in elegant versions of the kind of dim sum some of us fell in love with in high school when we were still taking the bus down to Chinatown to eat at Tai Hong and Grandview Gardens. This is where to come for great baked buns filled with barbecued pork or with sweetened egg yolk; the basic shiu mai and har gao are wonderful. And some of the food is so old-fashioned as almost to defy description: gingery red-cooked pig's feet ladled from a giant earthen crock; crunchy shaved pig's ears tossed with chile oil and served over a bed of fried won ton noodles; and a soothing rice porridge laced with minced fish. When you're in the proper mood, Full House can be stunningly good. 1220 S. Golden West Ave., Arcadia, (626) 446-8222.