Dim Sum is the Chinese version of Sunday brunch: served anytime from mid-morning to late afternoon, with various bite-sized portions of food served in small bamboo steamer baskets and lots of tea.
It’s a lazy, long meal. Most dishes are very light in flavour, portions are small, and each plate is shared by the whole table, family style. Because of the small portions, you’re able to eat a wide variety of food. The cuisine itself includes various dumplings, rolls, buns, meats, congees, savoury cakes, and sweets. In traditional Cantonese teahouses, carts with plates of dim sum food are rolled around the restaurants by waitresses, with patrons ordering and being served straight from each cart (each cart will have a specific dim sum dish that you can request to be served or not). However, this is rare to find nowadays. In most modern restaurants, owners have chosen to switch to menu-ordering to reduce the amount of labour necessary to complete a round of dim sum. This was the case at Forbidden City.
Traditional Cantonese cooking is meant to be light, emphasizing the natural flavour of the ingredients themselves rather than using sauces. Dim sum can be a bit tricky at most Chinese restaurants in North America, as some owners try to cater to western tastes, upping portions and using MSG to enhance flavour. Although this is tolerable for most food at a lot of Chinese restaurants, stuff like that completely ruins dim sum; dim sum is meant to be light and elegant (think British high tea).
Restaurants that have more authentic Chinese food are well known and very popular among Chinese families in Calgary, and Forbidden City is one of them.
I’ve visited all of the more popular Chinese restaurants in North Calgary, and (according to my Chinese mom) Forbidden City is hailed to be one of the best in Calgary. While I’ve had their normal dinner fare, this was the first time I’ve visited for dim sum. I walked in last Sunday with high expectations.
Forbidden City is situated in Pacific Place mall, an Asian shopping centre in NE Calgary. The mall has a variety of stores, all very authentically Asian; boba cafes, Chinese medicinal herbs, home cookware, art, furniture, as well as a T&T supermarket (an Asian supermarket chain, which also has great food). All stores are small businesses, most run by Asian families. With Chinese New Year around the corner, the day I visited also happened to be a day of celebration. The mall was packed with people, performers, and vendors, and on a stage in the center of the food court were performances of Chinese dance, martial arts, singing, and traditional Chinese music. It was hard to squeeze by all the people to reach the restaurant.
Upon arrival, we had to take a number and were informed that the wait may take around an hour (this was due to the large volume of people at the mall that day). After around 30 minutes, the time which we took to look at the festivities, our number was called and we were allowed in.
We ended up with a pretty terrible spot with a really cold draft coming from the outside. I requested for spot change, but the waitress (very rudely, too) told us that we ended up with what we could and if we wanted a new spot we would have to go outside and wait in the queue again. Sigh. (Chinese restaurants generally have pretty rude waitresses, so I’m not too surprised).
This is how the menu works: you have all menu items on a long list (as shown below), and you mark the things you want with a pencil. Each item has a star rating (one, two three or four stars), and that determines the price of the dish. The waiter then takes your order, and as each dish comes it is crossed off your “list” by the waiter.
A good rule of thumb is to order 2-3 dishes per person, as the portion sizes are relatively small. We had 5 people and ordered 11 dishes.
Forbidden City is on the pricey side for dim-sum in Calgary, but that doesn’t stop us from ordering whatever we want.
I do not order: I leave that to my mom because she knows what is good (if it was up to me, I would have ordered only egg tarts and deep fried glutinous rice dumplings). The food was served very quickly and came in 4 rounds.
Round 1:
From left to right: Mango Pudding, Baked BBQ Pork Pastry, Steamed Chicken Fingers in Black Bean Sauce
The mango pudding came pre-packaged in a disposable plastic sushi container, which was a bit odd. It wasn’t very good, either. It was mostly untouched and eventually eaten by my 2-year-old nephew.
The Baked BBQ Pork Pastry was DELICIOUS. It’s essentially BBQ pork wrapped in a puff pastry shell, kind of like a sausage roll. It’s warm and crispy on the outside, but with juicy, sweet pork on the inside, the ultimate comfort food. This one was a bit greasier than I would have liked, but it’s hard to mess up this dish if you have a good BBQ pork.
Steamed Chicken Fingers in Black Bean Sauce is one of my favourite dim sum dishes, and Forbidden City does it well, with very tender, flavorful meat. For westerners, the idea of eating chicken feet may seem a little unappetizing, but for me, it’s one of my favourite foods and a must-order for dim sum. If you’re uncomfortable with the idea of eating chicken feet, I recommend trying the Steamed Spareribs in Black Bean Sauce for dim sum instead; the ribs, if done well, should also be extremely tender and flavorful.
Round 2:
For some reason, my mom ended up ordering both Seafood and Meat Bean Curd Roll with Mushroom Soup and Seafood and Meat Bean Curd Roll in Abalone Gravy. Both are very similar: with meat, some kind of seafood, and rice noodles wrapped in a tofu beancurd skin, kind of like a tofu-skin spring roll. This is a very Chinese dish. One version was likely steamed in mushroom soup (as the name suggests) and was more watery. The other was likely pan-fried then placed in abalone gravy, which made the skin crispier. Both were very good, lightly flavoured and very juicy on the inside. I would recommend these to anyone coming to this restaurant.
Steamed Pork Soup Dumpling (xiaolongbao, shown on far right, inside the square-shaped container) are dumplings made with very thin skin, with a (usually) pork meatball on the inside. As the dumplings are steamed, the juice from the pork turns into a pocket of very flavorful soup inside each dumpling (thus the name “soup dumpling). This soup is meant to be sucked out of the dumpling before eating it as a whole; thus eating these is a very delicate process. Breaking the skin before sucking the soup is considered a failure. A good soup dumpling is characterized by very thin skin and lots of soup. This one was made well; with much thinner skin than most, I’ve had in Calgary.
Round 3:
I’ve never liked Pan-Fried Taro Cakes because it seems like it should be a sweet dish, but it’s savoury instead. It’s a cake made with rice flour, taro, and sausage, and is a classic dim sum dish. This one was nice and crispy, but I just can’t seem to get past the odd savoury flavour.
Round 4:
Hong Kong Style Spicy Eggplant was definitely the worst dish ordered. Deep-fried chunks of eggplant with spicy garlic (???) dusting on top, this one was a bit heavy in flavour and too rich in grease for our tastes.
Pan-fried Dried Scallop Enoki and Bean Curd Shoot is a long and complicated name for a dish of enoki (a type of long, white Asian mushroom) wrapped in tofu skin, breaded, deep-fried, then tossed and soaked in a scallop sauce. This was definitely the best dish we ordered; the dual crispy/juicy texture of the soaked deep-fried tofu strips was just right, and the sauce was full of seafood flavour and very tasty. If I could, I would have brought that sauce home. Despite the fact that the dish was deep-fried, the grease was not overwhelming, due to the presence of the enoki mushrooms; instead, it was light and refreshing.
We also ordered a Chicken Congee, which came last but was eaten before I could take a picture. Congee, which is white rice porridge, is always good at restaurants and is a nice, warm way to finish off a meal.
(My mom denied my request to order egg tarts and deep fried glutinous rice dumplings, by the way).
Out of all the dishes, those which stuck out the most were the Bean Curd Rolls (from round 2) and the _____ (from round 4), both being tofu dishes that are not typically found in Dim Sum menus. I would recommend these to both Asians and Non-Asians dining at this restaurant, as they were both light, tasty, and not too odd. Otherwise, the other more classic dim sum dishes all lived up to my dim sum standards, and they’re all a safe order if dining here. The only dishes I would not recommend are the Mango Pudding (seemingly prepackaged), and the Hong Kong Style Spicy Eggplant (too greasy and spicy).
Overall, Forbidden City’s dim sum did not disappoint. I would definitely rank them as one of the better Chinese restaurants in Calgary. The authentic Cantonese dim sum feeling and flavours were there, not completely masked by the MSG so commonly used in North American Chinese cuisine. The cuisine here is not going to be as eloquent as authentic dim sum in Hong Kong (which I’ve had, and oh my god it’s so good), or as good as dim sum in cities with larger Asian populations (ie. Vancouver, San Francisco). However, for those of us living here, Forbidden City is a solid choice for a quality Asian Sunday brunch with friends or family. Just be wary of the rude waitresses.
Forbidden City Dim Sum and Seafood / Pebble Street Cafe, 999 36 St NE, Calgary, AB T2A 7T1, (403) 250-1848
