Golden Unicorn

On Sunday, Ken and I got off to a rocky start with our cab ride to Chinatown because the cab driver had no idea where he was going. We asked him to drop us off by Golden Unicorn and he wanted to drop us off in the general vicinity (close to the FDR). When I told him he had to go to the exact intersection I asked for, he acted like he didn’t understand. We eventually got out of the cab and ended up walking to Golden Unicorn, but we were pretty late getting the day started and by the time we got to Golden Unicorn, there wasn’t much food left.

I like most of the places I’ve visited for dim sum in Chinatown; they’re not absolutely mind blowing but the food is good and there’s usually only a 20 minute wait to get a table and to start eating. The last time I visited Golden Unicorn there were carts being pushed by women yelling Cantonese to each other and diners; this time, there were only two carts being pushed around with the leftovers no one else wanted.

We started off with pork buns:

A bit on the sweet side, but generally pretty good; they reminded me of the pork buns from Fei Da, the bakery I like to visit on Mott Street. Some places add green onion to their pork buns, which is a huge no-no for me, but this one tasted pretty good.

We eventually found a server that helped flag down the next two dishes – beef meatballs with Worcestershire sauce:

And my personal favorite, shrimp dumplings:

We also had some sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves (we were too hungry and I forgot to photograph it). There were things I missed that are my usual dim sum staples: mashed taro with pork in a bird’s nest, glutinous rice paste dumplings with pork filling, and tripe. We were too late for all of those (they’d sold out earlier in the day) but luckily we left just in time to get some liang pi noodles at Xi’an Famous Foods, baked goods around the corner, and some fruit for our ride home.