A little over a month ago "LoriA" sent an email asking about the Dim Sum at Hong Kong BBQ & Dim Sum, a little restaurant located inside of Vinh Hung Market in Mira Mesa. She was looking for take-out Dim Sum for an event and asked if I’d ever had a chance to sample the Dim Sum. In my reply I mentioned that we had attempted to eat there once, but let’s just say that the Market was not having a "good day". It was a pretty hot summer day, and we were met with some very strong "fragrances" emanating from the meat department, which proceeded to snuff out any appetite we had. Since that day, just the mention of this restaurant would send waves of nausea pulsing through the Missus. So it looked as if I’d never get a chance to check out Hong Kong BBQ and Dim Sum.
Finally, overcome with curiosity, I decided to do a quick Dim Sum breakfast at HK BBQ. Solo, of course. My apologies to Lori, for taking so long, as I fear that the date of your event has passed.
I’ve been told that Vinh Hung Market had once been a movie theater, and you can tell by the set-up, that the restaurant has been built over the structure of a theater snack bar…right down to the lights!
Hong Kong BBQ & Dim Sum opens at 9am every day, and it seemed that most of the business is of the take-out/steam table variety. The Dim Sum is stacked in a metal tray on the steam table as well, not a promising sign.
I grabbed a seat, and after a few minutes, the harried Young Man that was working both the steam table and waiting tables handed me a fairly large menu (200+ items), and a Dim Sum card. The Dim Sum prices were the same whether you did take out or ate at the tables, and ranged from $1.95 to $2.95. There was a category for "Weekend Special", but when I asked I was told, "no, there are no specials", even though it was the weekend.
Right after placing my order, the Server walked up behind the counter and placed 2 metal containers on a tray and grabbed some Wu Gok with his bare hands, (which kinda grossed me out since he had just been handling money) laying them on a plate and pretty much dumped them on my table.
Pork Siu Mai:
Not only were these cold, but they were pretty tasteless as well. Also, all those greasy yellow spots looked like the Siu Mai in the containers above these were draining on the Siu Mai below.
Har Gow:
The Har Gow were pretty good, nice shrimp flavor, but the wrappers were a bit dried out, again from just lying in the metal pans without adequate heat and steam to keep them moist.
While I was deciding whether I could manage to eat a second Siu Mai, my Beef Tripe arrived:
This was by far the best item of the day, crisp tripe with a nice ginger-green onion-chile pepper flavor. Pretty good.
Wu Gok (Deep Fried Taro Balls)
As you can tell by the blistered appearance, these have not been fried properly and tended to crumble very easily. However, the filling of the Wu Gok was very moist, but very bland, and lacking in flavor(after further thought, I’m thinking it’s the pork). I could only bring myself to eat half of one, and took the rest home. The Missus took one bite and said, "this has no taste", and proceeded to return said item to the container, never again to see the light of day……
The service at Hong Kong BBQ was indifferent, but efficient to be honest, the poor guy was running like crazy. As you can tell the prices are on the inexpensive side(total damage, around $11 with tea), but the Dim Sum seems to be very uneven. The roast duck did look pretty good, so maybe….maybe I’ll t
ry the Chinese BBQ next time…maybe.
Lori, if you did purchase Dim Sum from Hong Kong BBQ, I hope you had better luck than I did. And in what I though was the Coup de Grace, they couldn’t even spell "Dim Sum" correctly on the sign!
Hong Kong BBQ & Dim Sum
10550 Camino Ruiz(Inside of Vinh Hung Market)
San Diego, CA 92126
Sun-Thurs 9am-9pm
Fri-Sat 9am-930pm