Guangdong's Dim Sum is Mm-Mm-Good

I've been hesitant about rating Chinese food on my blog because it was tough for me since I was subjected to very authentic version of Chinese food when I was living in LA. But I've found a good Dim Sum place in Columbus that I would be willing to go back to, and I thought I should share so more people would want Chinese food, thus more improved & authentic Chinese restaurants would be relocated to the Midwest. (A foody girl could dream, couldn't she?!) Anyways, on with the food.

First of all, you had to understand that an authentic Chinese restaurant usually had no indoor decor or ambiance to speak of because the focus was on food. So some oriental looking pictures on the wall with red carpet and some table with chopsticks and plates were all you going to get. Dim Sum, for those of you who didn't know, was Cantonese brunch/afternoon tea/tapa. You ordered small dishes and a pot of hot tea, and you invited all your friends and family together and talked about your life while enjoying good food. And the more people that were there for Dim Sum, the more selection of food you could order. This time we had 10 people, which was perfect to sample everything on the menu.

Since there were so many items on the menu, I would just write about a couple of them as informative examples so you could start somewhere whenever you decided to try. There were some staple items such as shrimp dumplings and pork dumplings. They were small, hor d'oeuvre size steamed dumplings with different fillings. And if you felt adventurous, you could try their shark fin dumplings. Shark fin didn't have taste, so it absorbed the seasoning around it. And Guangdong's shark fin dumpling had perfect seasoning and it's a must-try delicacy. Then there's the steam BBQ pork buns that's favored by mostly everyone. The bun was made from rice flour and didn't have gluten formed as oppose to bread, so the buns were soft and sweet and melt in your mouth. The BBQ pork was Cantonese BBQ and the meat seasoning was slightly sweet, combined with the soft bun, it was like a taste of Cantonese BBQ heaven in a cloud. The veggy spring roll was great too. The spring roll was rolled in bean curd and slightly fried. The bean curd gave a different texture than the regular spring roll and the dish was vegetarian friendly. There was another type of spring roll but had meat in there, and the spring rolled was lathered in their special sauce. It's just a different way to present the dish, but they were equally delicious. The pan fried turnip cake was also very popular. The turnip cake was made with mashed Chinese turnip (or Daikon if you are more familiar with Asian ingredient) combined with seasoning, some rice flour (as glue), and Chinese sausage. The turnip cake mixture was then steamed so it would become solid form, then sliced into thin slices and pan fried. The outside of the turnip cake was crispy and the inside creamy and tender. It's usually a kids approved dish too! Another must-try dish was the sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves. The sticky rice had fillings of miced chicken, pork, dried shrimp, dried scallop. It's wrapped in lotus leaves and steamed so the sticky rice had a sort of floral fragrant to it.

The Dim Sum served in Guangdong was the best I've had in Columbus, and the food ranked 3.25 out of 5 on my yummy scale (this would be my Chinese food yummy scale. To give you a Caucasian scale, my boyfriend ranked it 3.75 out of 5.) If you don't have Chinese friends with you, this might be a big adventure for you. But once you've tried it, you might get addicted to it. Guangdong (the sign says "New House of Mandarin") restaurant's address is 6101 Busch Blvd. Columbus, OH.