4706 on the Chinese calendar started this past Thursday, and as tempted as I am to make a joke about this being the Year of the Rat, I’ll refrain because my parents both happen to be Rats.
Anyway, because I’m lame and wouldn’t dream of organizing a celebration on a school night, I pretended today was New Year’s with dim sum at Pearl Liang.
Despite its location in a soulless office complex behind Paddington Station, Pearl Liang has a lot of interior style, polite service, and high-quality dim sum. Prawn cheung fun and prawn dumplings are filled with juicy, sweet shrimp (that’s not overcooked into chewy tastlessness). Pork shu mai is another one of my faves at the restaurant – again because the bits of meat are identifiably pork, rather than the usual pork fat with pork bits.
And what this photo above fails to show clearly are the xiao long bao. They’re filled with meaty broth and encased in a thin, dough shell, and while the pork filling isn’t as dense as it is at Joe’s Shanghai or Din Tai Fung (always the gold standard), they’re tasty and £2.50 for three, which is cheap enough that I can load up guilt-free.
Because Pearl Liang’s decor is so pretty and the food so quality, I always feel lucky that the prices are so reasonable. Regardless of how much we’ve stuffed ourselves with, the tab always seems to work out to about £20 per person. And that’s something to celebrate. Happy belated new year!