Golden Great Wall Szechuan

About 15 months ago, before we got into the whole blogging thing, I had written a short diner review of Golden Great Wall Szechuan on West Broadway. We’ve been back a few times (both for dim sum and for dinner) since then so I figured it’s about time we updated this as a blog entry.

It’s interesting that things haven’t changed much since last year. Dim sum is still relatively quiet here on Saturdays compared to some other dim sum joints. Golden Great Wall serves both Southern and Northern dim sum as well having some pretty good lunch specials. The Mongolian Beef lunch special – a Western style dish that really has nothing to do with the food from Mongolia - comes with a bowl of rice and a bowl of soup (your choice of hot and sour or beef and tofu) for $8.50. The beef and tofu soup was a good choice for us today because it was very soothing and we weren’t in the mood for the anything too spicy on this visit.

For some reason, our rice didn’t show up until later on in our meal (I think they forgot it) but we were able to enjoy the savory beef slices on their own in the meanwhile. While this may not be an authentic Northern Chinese dish, I understand why it’s so popular.

The Sliced Beef Pancake ($6.99) is pretty good here – I like how the pancake was crispy on the outside but soft and chewy when you bite into it.

I think I miss having the cucumber that they put into this dish at Dinesty Chinese Restaurant in Richmond.

You can’t come to Golden Great Wall without ordering the Shanghai Dumpling ($6.99). This is one of the better Xiao Long Bao that we’ve tried and almost on par with the ones at Shanghai River. The dumplings are plump with soup and the skin is fairly thin.

We also ordered the Siu Mai Pork Dumplings ($4.25) which were nice and large and very juicy as we bit into them. I’ve always kind of wondered about the roe/tobiko that they put on siu mai… I can’t recall any other Chinese dishes that use it… I wonder why they put it on these dumplings?

The food here is pretty good but I suppose the dim sum prices are a bit more expensive than some other places which is why it’s not as busy here as other places.

Here are some pictures of our previous visits:

Sliced Beef Pancake

Xiao Long Bao

Steamed Shrimp Blanket and Pan Fried Radish Cakes

Spicy Wontons with garlic and peppers

This was a neat fish and vegetable dish that we had for dinner one night. The waiter came by and poured some water over dry ice which created a foggy/steamy effect which was really cool.