I don’t think I will ever get tired of dim sum. While I do a decent job at attempting it at home, it’s one thing I can’t make the variety of items that I can get while going out. Also, I will eat anything with custard. Custard buns, baked custard buns, egg custard tarts… I am beginning to feel like Forrest Gump. Also, my parents are obsessed with talking about Grand Harbor. For some background, I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, and we have a fairly delicious Chinese restaurant in nearby North Pole. (Yes, there’s a North Pole, and yes, there’s a Santa Claus house.) The guy who runs the place in Alaska is the brother of the guy who runs Grand Harbor. So they keep talking about how they want to go. I decided I should give it a try to find out if it would be worth it for them to visit while they are here.
As we were heading down to Santa Cruz for a long weekend, it seemed like a really good opportunity to make a pit stop in Burlingame and have some dim sum (fun fact, they only do the dim sum at lunch, apparently). I made a booking for 1:00 pm online, but changed it last minute to 12:15 as we were actually going to be heading out earlier than anticipated. (Second fun fact, they write all their bookings from the internet down in a book, so if you change it last minute, the book won’t be updated. They sat us anyway.) Even though it was lunch on a Friday, and the place is huge, it was completely full. It felt like a good sign.
While they do have a cart with some baked goods in it, almost everything else you order off of a menu they bring to your table. We did, however, get the pork puffs and pineapple custard buns to start with while we perused the menu to decide what goodies we wanted to have. We decided on abalone siu mai, prawn rice noodle rolls, sausage buns, pork buns, duck necks and turnip cake in XO sauce to order off the menu.
But how was the food? Turns out, we definitely over-ordered. The pork puffs were fantastic. They had a nice, light and flaky exterior with a delicious barbecue pork filling. The custard buns were also really good (and huge). The siu mai had great flavor, but the abalone was slightly chewy, so next time I’d probably just go without it. The shrimp rice noodle rolls were nice too, with plump, juicy shrimp inside and a great sauce. I had never had sausage buns before, and they came out piping hot. They were really tasty (I do love Chinese sausage), but definitely got less good the cooler they got (so eat them fast).
I am a sucker for a good pork bun, and I’ve been obsessed with making char siu pork at home and using the leftovers to make my own buns. So, I usually get annoyed when they aren’t as good as I can do. These were definitely some of the best ones I’ve had in the area with a light, fluffy bun and a really flavorful interior. The turnip cake with XO sauce was also really flavorful (although it was hard to finish off as at this point we realized we definitely ordered too much). The duck necks were the most unusual dish we ordered, where the necks were cooked really well and you nibbled on the bones. They were full of flavor and I would definitely order them again.
I have to say that Grand Harbor definitely exceeded my expectations for dim sum. I have tried a few places in the bay area, but a lot of them are just lacking in certain areas (usually the pork bun). I don’t think I had a bad tasting dish over the course of the entire meal, and it’s definitely a place I would bring my parents to if they wanted to try on their next trip. I also want to go back for dinner sometime to see if their main courses are as superb as their dim sum dishes.
Score: 4.5/5
Recommendation: Duck necks if you are experimental, pork buns if you aren’t!
Grand Harbor
1492 Old Bayshore Hwy
Burlingame, CA 94010
