Blooming VIP Restaurant plus board games

Dim sum

and board games

I think this was a char siu bao.

Har gow were very tasty but failed skin and fold test. Lo bac guo pretty solid.

Har gow were very tasty but failed skin and fold test.

Char siu bao and turnip cake-- latter also tasty.

Roast pork was okay. Given how good the steamed and pan fried items were by comparison, skip this.

Xiao long bao looked meh but they all got eaten.

Pai gut not much to look at but very meaty and pleasant.

Shu mai were much tastier than they looked, loaded wit shrimp bits mixed in the pork.

No clue what this was, but stuffed with shrimp and tasty.

Beef shortrib was a nice change.

Gai lan tasted like tap water. Huge portion tho.

The spread.

Honey cake.

Pricing.

Pork floss and preserved egg jook. Not bad.

Dan tat were mediocre.

Har cheung fun skins waaaay too thick but not bad otherwise.

The spread, part 2.

Ngau paak yip (ginger beef sheet tripe) was delicious.

Dim sum is no longer cheap (and hasn't been for a while).

Might be easier to read. Inside.

Inside.

Giant cell phone store advertising?

Chun Yang Tea. Menu.

Menu.

Inside.

Ordering.

Black tea latte with taro and sago was a 15 minute wait.

Sea Salt and Paper.

Quacks of Quedlinburg.

Getting destroyed by Sue as usual.

Trio was a surprisingly tough yet easy to play memory game.

Won with 777's.

Sea Salt and Paper.

Steamed and pan fried items at Blooming VIP Restaurant were really good, even if the har gow skins were too thick and had the wrong number of folds (har cheung fun skins also too thick). However the baked items, such as the dan tat, were decidedly mediocre, and they did not have some classics like deep fried shrimp balls. Overall experience was very tasty yet sufficiently flawed/incomplete to give me pause.

Chun Yang Tea afterwards was pretty good, although the wait for the black tea latte with taro and sago was quite long... guessing they hadn't made the first batch of taro ang sago yet, as it was a 15 minute wait. Parking also was the opposite of Blooming VIP-- Chun Yang Tea shares a tiny, absolutely full lot. Fortunately plenty of street parking nearby.

Board games filled the rest of the afternoon, with Sea Salt and Paper, Trio, and Quacks of Quedlinburg being the games of choice. The first two are lighter games, with Trio being deceptively difficult (as it's a memory game), and Quacks of Quedlinburg is an old favorite of the group.