Golden Unicorn – Dim sum

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Golden Unicorn Restaurant
18 E Broadway
Btw Division & Henry St
New York, NY

Reservations: Not for dim sum. First come first serve. Go inside and walk up to this woman w/a mic behind a podium and grab a number. The wait is not terribly that long even on the weekend. No more than 15 mins.

To start things off, for those of who you don’t know, Dim sum, or your heart’s desire, which is the English translation, (correct me if I’m wrong) where you choose from an array of small baskets of food to your heart’s desire, which is served during breakfast and lunch in China. Within these baskets that are usually wheeled by a dim sum girl with a dim sum cart who pushes her cart along the carpeted floor and yelling out names of the foods she has. Each cart is different. Some might have different dumplings, steamed or fried, others might have sweets, vegetables, and other delights. And of course you eat it with a chopstick and drink it with tea. Ahh…that is how the Chinese eat, relax, and chat with a cup of tea to start off the day.

Enough about history, let’s get on with the story. The only reason why I came out that day was to finally have miss eggrolls to come out to have dim sum with the finechina girl. That and she was craving for this one particular dim sum treat so I had to take her there. I haven’t been to Golden Unicorn in over 10 years, since I was a kid, and I was interested to see if it was the same.

So…

Sorry for the slight blurriness, I was trying to take a quick photo without being noticed, haha. They made massive renovations since the last time I’ve been here. It actually looks pretty good.

As we were seated, the waiter came and asked what kind of tea I wanted. I asked for chrysanthemum (no sugar) for Vicky and Gok Bo (what’s the translation of this?) w/sugar for softrice and nachobitch.

Already we see the dim sum carts come rolling by:

What I thought was cool about this place is that they have english names of the dishes that they have! Look!

This restaurant makes it very tourist friendly, but the dim sum girls still have problems understanding English. So point at the picture or come with a chinese person! Like me for miss eggrolls.

First up on the list,

Steamed green leak dumpling w/shrimp:

Verdict: This one was pretty skimpy because I used to have it deep fried and it was more round-like than dumpling-like. It didn’t taste that spectacular, but it’s good to try.

Recommended: Yes, try it if you’ve never had it.

Shrimp dumpling

Verdict: The shrimp didn’t taste very fresh and I wasn’t expecting it to be. This dish is among one of the most popular dishes.

Recommended: I would recommend it to tourists, straight up.

Shumai

Verdict: This is my first time seeing a shumai like this. It tries to imitate the japanese version, but it sure doesn’t taste like it. I actually prefer this kind of shumai than the old yellow skinned chinese shumai.

Recommended: Yes.

On the left: Chicken Feet

Verdict: Now it sounds gross, but it tastes pretty good. Don’t worry the nails are off and it’s completely edible. The skin is soft and filled with delicious sauce. Everywhere I eat, this usually tastes nearly the same. But I have to say this place is very skimpy when it comes to their food. Btw, when eating, don’t forget to spit out the bones!

Recommended: Yes

Ha Chern or Steam shrimps roll covered in sweet soy sauce

Since Miss Eggroll ate all two plates that we ordered without sharing even one plate with the rest of us, we didn’t know how it tastes like. According to her, the shrimp tastes unfresh and it was missing something. That girl ate just the skin and picked out ALL of the shrimps. People, don’t ever, ever pull a “miss eggroll,” it’s just bad taste. When eating dim sum, you need to have manners and I can’t stress that enough. When you eat, you never take the plate to yourself or at least ask first. This is the same when serving tea. Don’t just serve it to yourself, pour tea to others and they will in return respect you by tapping on the table 3x. Miss Eggroll, you need training in chinese mannerisms 101. =P

Recommended: Yes. This is still one of the most popular dim sum dishes of all time.

Intermission

Cheers!

Crispy Spring Roll w/vegetables

Verdict: This didn’t taste anything special at all, plus again, it’s so skimpy.

Recommended: No.

Fried Taro Cake

Recommended: Yes, it usually has an interesting, delightful taste. It’s very oily btw.

Fried Shrimp Balls wrapped with bacon

Verdict: According to nachobitch and softrice, this is a very very skimpy portion. It’s definitely bigger in Golden Bridge Restaurant on Bowery St. Plus this dish tastes awful. It’s so salty and I can barely taste the shrimp.

Recommended: No.

Seen-jook-gune or vegetables and meat wrapped with fried bean curd

Fried Soft Shell Crab

Verdict: This is the sickest piece of crab I have ever had in my life. The only good part about this was the fried legs of the crab and which I quote from softrice, “It tastes like Popeyes.” And it’s true. One bite onto the shell of the crab and it will give you a mouth full of poison. It is so disgusting. Never never again.

Recommended: Helllll no.

Background: Never ever correct the dim sum girl’s english because they’ll get embarrassed, pissed, and have even lower self esteem than they are currently feeling. mr. softrice could not understand a word the dim sum girl was saying when she was calling out soft shell crab. It was so fast that it sounded like sofe-chell-crab, sofe-chell-crab repeated a zillion times. Then when softrice realizes what she means, he exclaims, “OHHHHH, SOFT SHELL CRAB!” Man, her face blushed quickly and she later wheels away. I know he didn’t intend it to be that way, but please.

This concludes our dim sum. We were definitely full, but was not completely satisfied with the taste.

Here’s my report card for them:

Food: 0.7
Decor: 0.80
Service: 0.89
Speed: 0.89
Price: 0.60

Verdict: 3.88/5

This is one of the cleaner chinatown restaurant according to the NYC Department of Health & Mental Hygiene.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/rii/index.shtml

GOLDEN UNICORN RESTAURANT
18 EAST BROADWAY, MANHATTAN 10002
Current violation points: 0
Inspection Date: 11/17/2005
No violations were recorded at the time of this inspection.

And btw, take a look at what hung on their wall:

How can this magazine rank this restaurant with one of the finest french restaurants and some of the better know restaurants?? This was in 1996, but still. It’s just unbelievable.