S&T Hong Kong Seafood Restaurant

We like to yum cha on Saturdays. We've been exploring different places in SF and this weekend decided to give S&T HK Seafood Restaurant a try. It was the first rainy day of the season so we didn't feel like going too far. We got a pretty early start this morning so weren't too worried about lines. Also the place is located on Noriega and 33rd so we weren't too concerned with parking either. Sure enough, no line and easy parking. +1

We have this funny thing of walking by restaurants and making sure there are people inside before entering. Because you know if there's nobody inside, that means something. So we did the pass by and there were plenty of folks in there. Not crowded yet because we were still early for a Saturday morning, but enough to assure us that the food was at least better than just edible.

We were greeted at the door right away by a friendly gentleman who lead us through one dining area into a second dining area and seated us at a somewhat strangely positioned table for two. The table was placed next to a column and just looked odd there. Anyway, the nice man asked us what kind of tea we wanted and we always just get jasmine tea because that's one of my faves anyway.

The table was dirty. Well, most of it was clean but along the edge where I sat, there was a portion that got missed and was smeared with some kind of sauce. I almost put my arm up in it! That was slightly distressing but I just wiped it with my napkin and got over it. It was an old Chinese restaurant after all. Otherwise things looked pretty clean. The plates, chopsticks, cups, teapot, all passed inspection.

When we were seated we were handed a menu and pencil. This is one of those places where you can order what dim sum you want as well as pull items off the trays that circulate the dining areas. We sat for a while wondering if we could just pull items off the trays but there were no ladies circulating for the first few minutes we sat there. So we marked off items on the menu.

Most of the menu had English translations but there was a small section that they didn't even bother to translate. We're not sure why. We chose 5 items off that menu. One of them was a random stab at the Chinese section with no translation. We were feeling adventurous.

The second they came and took our order, a tray came by with some "ham sui gok" which i love. They are deep fried items with a crispy, doughy, chewy outside and a pork mixture filling on the inside. Not long after the shrimp "cheung fun" came. We always get that at each place we go to and use it as a kind of measuring stick for the quality of the place. This is more of my sister's realm as she has a more discerning pallet for the shrimp and swears that she's had it where the noodle was perfectly textured around very fresh tasting pieces of shrimp. I thought this place did an ok job. The noodle wasn't too soft and didn't immediately fall apart when we tried to eat it. It was good.

Next came "har gow" and another dumpling that we assumed was the random one we chose from the Chinese part of the menu. Both contained shrimp. So far 3 items with shrimp. Good thing we were at a seafood restaurant I guess. The har gow wasn't that good to me. It felt a little dry. The other dumpling was fine. Nothing special. Tasted a little bland actually but I don't mind it that way.

We had "xiao lung bao" and it didn't have enough soup in it. The skin was maybe a tad thicker than we would have liked and I felt there was too much meat inside. It was ok.

We had marked one more thing on the menu that never came. It's translation was "deep fried meat dumpling" and we chose it because we wanted to know what it was. It never came. -1 But by then we were mostly full and ready for dessert anyway.

For dessert we got "dan tat" and "dou fu fa" which have in a way also become a sort of litmus test for dim sum places. I really, really liked the dou fu fa. It was smooth and the ginger liquid was just perfectly sweet enough. The dan tat were ok, not terrible but not all that good either. They were fine. I'm glad the dou fu fa was so yummy though.

Overall it was good experience. All that food came out to be around $25 for the both of us. I am not very good at looking at receipts but I did notice that we were charged for tea. Is that normal? I'm crazy for not knowing because we go all the time. Anyway, a decent meal and pretty good experience.