The best Dim Sum in Chinatown

It is a winter and cold weather ritual (January '10,  December '09, April '08), for some reason: dim sum at Dim Sum Go Go on East Broadway where it meets the last gasp of the Bowery, below Canal Street. East Broadway is far from Broadway. That confused me in the beginning. But the beginning was long ago.

I first ate here about seven years ago, and the quality has remained absolutely consistent, and the prices as reasonable. We have never ventured from the dim sum menu, the little paper printout that is waiting on the table along with a stubby pencil and the ritual dishes of XO sauce, fresh green ginger and sweet vinegar. There is a lunch special menu and there is a full menu, both long and the latter not exactly cheap, with one item that caught my eye, yesterday: 'Special Pond': sauteed scallops and lily buds. In season.

But we stuck to our favourite dim sum: duck - juicy and rich and very tender (pictured above, right); pea shoot dumplings, green and fresh; mushroom, well flavoured with celery; shrimp and chive; then sticky rice and chicken wrapped in lotus leaves and steamed; finally sweet roast pork buns and, at last, soft tapioca magically wrapped around a sweetened egg yolk - for dessert.

It all arrives in steaming bamboo baskets which we like to keep stacked as high as possible to keep the lower courses hot. I noticed that several Chinese couples only received two baskets at a time. Perhaps it is only the foreign devils who are stupid enough to accept it all at once.

There are newer places to find dim sum, and there are certainly older ones, and it may be that I have been living under a rock. But in my particular under-the-rock part of New York, these are the best, by far.