Encroachment!
 

Bad news today. I went to my usual dim sum place. Hadn't been in awhile. As it filled up, I realized that 50% of the tables were majority non-Asian groups. As you know, that is a very bad sign.

I checked Yelp, and sure nuff, the place has gotten into the top three highest ranked Portland dim sum places. There goes the neighborhood! The selection will shrink, the flavours will get blander, the quality will fall.

Time to find a new dim sum place and this time, I'll go on Yelp and bash it as much as I can. J/k on the last part. Maybe.

Could you explain to us country folks what exactly is a "dim sum place" is ?

Funny, that's how my wife and I rate them also. Thankfully there are so many more selection of Dim sum places to choose from down here.

I once walked into a Mexican restaurant with my plumber (a Mexican American fellow) to hammer out some issues on a project over lunch. He said, "Lets go, this place isn't real, there isn't one Mexican eating there, but the waiters are also white." This is right in the middle of West Hollywood. We both laughed.

Before I moved to Los Angeles from Boston 35 years ago, I thought Taco Bell was Mexican food.

That is like calling a McRib BBQ.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dim_sum

Was it infiltrated by Uyghurs? Also, Japanese or Thais would count for encroachment, or even Szechwanese.

Good point, non-Chinese Asians can also be a bad sign for the authenticity of a dim sum place, but realistically Portland's Japanese or Thai or Vietnamese popl'n isn't prone to flock to dim sum houses.

In some cities there are large enough ethnic popl'ns that a good Japanese place can be filled with almost all Japanese, a good Vietnamese place with almost all Vietnamese, etc. In those cities, when I walk into that Japanese restaurant, I can hear people thinking "oh no, there goes the neighborhood". But Portland is too small for that.

By the same token, when a good ethnic place here gets encroached into mediocrity, there aren't so many others to choose from. It's not like LA or the Bay Area, both have dozens of dim sum places that are better than the best one in all of Portland. Here, I'll have to hope that a new place has opened up recently and is still "unspoiled" and is convenient enough to be a semi-regular stop.

Growing up, we went to Japanese restaurants that were run by the Japanese. Now, 95% of them are run by Koreans. Japanese food is so hip that all the new ones are almost always high dollar date restaurants. Our Japanese restaurants are frequented by the same people that go to places like The Cheese Cake Factory (food that is ok, really).

Dude, I'm moving to OH in a few months. Your freaking me out.

On the other hand, if you can order properly, ie in the proper language and correct accent, you'll find that not much changes, other than the occasional "oy, sorry what the locals have done to the place. your usual?"

We have had a couple of Thai places go the way that the OP describes. There is one in a town called .....oh...never mind. But the Mom is still in charge of the kitchen. If you order a 2 from her you better have a mango iced tea standing by. 4 is unmanageable for yours truly.

It's been two years...still haven't found a new place?
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-discussions/611019-too-many-white-people.html

If you're moving to the midwest, Amazon.com is your friend.

There is actually one good dim sum place on the west side at least for the time being. Tons of them in Monterey Park, Rowland Heights, and other points east. Unfortunately we have transition happening, and oddly enough, in this case the servers are changing from Chinese (mix of Cantonese and Mandarin being spoken) to Hispanic (English as the common language).

Good thing my favorite chicken tika masala place is still safe...

This IS the new place, that we moved to after the encroachment sadly chronicled in that thread two years ago.

I think good unspoilt places are not lasting as long as they used to, now that the evil Yelp is around and every hipster thinks himself the next great foodie critic.

Portland is supposed to be foodie heaven, which may be true for locavore organic fair trade gourmet hipster cuisine. I'm not sure that is true for ethnic food. The stuff I really like to eat.

The state of Chinese food, I've whined about. I've given up trying to find a really good but not stupid expensive sushi place here. I think there are still some good izakaya and ramen places, though one former ramen temple is being converted to a concept seafood house. I did finally find a couple really good taco places. My fav Cuban place is still as good as ever but I have to go at odd hours as it is packed most of the time.

sad but true.

I went to Jasmine in San Diego today, which ranks pretty well online. It's a pretty big place and I got a little nervous seeing about half of the 150 or so tables full of white people. It took probably 20 min. to get any food, they had no more than two carts on the floor at a time for a packed dining room, easily 500 people. It got so bad that people started ordering the staff to go get them this or that dish off a cart. Since Mrs. Lee is a Mainlander, this is very easy for us. They are incredible ball busters and aren't shy about making sure someone notices them. I think some of the ABC and white folks were taken aback, but at least we got some food. And it was mediocre food too. Never again.

Nostatic, do you mean that place on Santa Monica or Wilshire just west of the 405? I went there for dinner last year and had dim sum. It was ok, but nothing compared to the ones in San Gabriel and Monterey Park.

you need some locavore organic fair trade gourmet hipster dim sum

from a bicycle powered food cart

Yeah, on Wilshire, 2nd floor of a strip mall. We went there for dinner once - unimpressive. You have to go Sat or Sun late morning for the carts. You have to time it. 10am when they open is too early as all the carts aren't ready. By noon they are pretty busy so around 10:45am is ideal. We went around 1pm once and they were already out of dofu fa. That was a bummer. It isn't as good as the best places in Monterey Park, but it is as good as the typical places there and better than Chinatown or anyplace on the west side.

if your in seattle, try this one Uwajimaya's great and huge place

This ought to be in the thread about snobs.

an irony here is that Leah Chase recently won a lifetime achievement award and in her interview said that Dookey's was not nearly as good during segregation because they could not serve white customers

Dirty rotten white people.. ruining everything... why don't they go back to where they came from?


:D:p:D

Funny thing, my wife is full blood Korean (as far as we know, adopted a a baby and raised in rural south Oregon).

I am a native SoCal boy... blond, blue eyes... so white I boarder on pink.

Wife is a 'county girl', loves meat and potoatos, hamburgers, apple pie...

I'm ethnic, love real Mexican, shushi, Chinese... my favorite thing about visiting her when she lived in Portland was going out to eat.

We have a Uwajimaya in Portland (Beaverton actually), it is smaller and mostly just a Japanese market, but a very good one.

Been there, nice however prices are a bit high... but then we have Gardena ;) YMMV

You all suck

Can you imagine our options here I'm Texas

I think we do ok wrt Indian food, and I've had some ok Vietnamese

We've actually got a couple of ok sushi places, but one went way down hill when the chef defected

That place was where the Japanese went when they were in town visiting, but it hasn't been the same since they brought in a guy from San Diego

The old guy was originally recruited from Japan

The best sushi that I've ever had was Shiro's in Seattle many years ago

You have FANTASTIC Chinese food in Houston. I think they're all on Bellaire Blvd. or in some cluster, but I've been there and you have it very good in Houston wrt Chinese food. I'm sure there must be some Cantonese folk there too, which means there has to be a good dim sum place or two.

Rick - what do you and Mrs. Lee think of C Fu?

Haven't been there. It's just too far. We sometimes go to Great Wall on Camelback and it's pretty good, but usually crowded.

I was just at that place at the recommendation of some of the locals 2 mos ago, and it was loaded to the gills with Chinese, and I thought the same thing.

WTF? It did kind of suck, and there was no dim sum selection per-se. I expected better from San Diego.

Then again, I'm used to Seattle. Chinatown there has lots of good places. House of Hong, I don't care what YELP says.

rjp

Omaha, NE is a black hole of Asian food. I haven't figured out PHX yet, and the dim sum is blah. Can't remember the places I went to but it was somewhere- near camelback in some strip mall next to some discount grocery store.

I haven't been able to find Fried stuffed tofu (Shrimp paste) anywhere outside seattle.

Any advice?

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_-XV_Vd2B_F8/S9.../IMG_26320.JPG

Guys there are no good dim sum place in san diego. Jasmine, Emerald are two of the bigger Chinese restaurants around here, and they are just bad as far as dim sum or Chinese food goes.

Seattle has plenty of dim sum places in chinatown like house of hong, top gun and more.

I will say that San Diego does have a SUPER Sichuan place called Spicey City. There's one in Irvine on Culver St. too. And their near twin restaurant, called Yunnan Garden, has locations in San Gabriel and in Las Vegas. I really have never had a better meal in the US than at Yunnan Garden and Spicey City. I will probably make a special trip to LA in a few weeks just to go there and for dim sum in San Gabriel or Monterey park.

I used to go to House of Hong so often the doorman knew me by name and car.... I think Top Gun was the place closed for drug deals IIRC..

rjp

drug dealers, pimps, dark allies=good food

LOL - I like dim sum every month or so. Always overeat, of course.

My favorite is to have to track down chicken feet or duck tongues. A white family sits down, and somehow they disappear from the selection. Of course, once you ask, they re-appear suddenly with a smile!

G

Chicken feet- kinda look like BBQ chicken strips.

It's funny- one of my EX's who is so white (Polish white- white) loves chicken feet. Got into it with the chopsticks and the whole bit while I sat there with my fork. I won't touch it. Got all kinds of crap about it every weekend.

Siu Mai, shrimp and chive ball, scallop ball, fan gor (?) (shrimp - cilantro) and real red chili sauce all day long...

We should do Pelican Dim SUm meet somewhere, sometime. No more Hooters.