I think it’s great that you can get Dim Sum daily and not have to wait until the weekend to get some. One of the places near my office is SW Seafood in Irvine (Jeffrey and Walnut). Two other places I am aware of is China Garden which is right across the street from SW Seafood and Palace Kitchen off Culver, also in Irvine.

Today my friend Tara came with me as we were also testing cameras. We took three sets of pictures. I was going to post the pics, but clearly there was one winner and it the one that I feel has “depth”.  I’ll go ahead and post the iPhone pics as well. Our third camera was a Nikon L3, what I call my digital instamatic. All the pics I took with that camera were blurry. 

SW Seafood serves Dim Sum from a menu rather than a cart, which is the traditional method. The nice thing about ordering by the menu is that you get what you want, when you want it. With the cart method, you are left to waiting until what you want come strolling by.

Tara and I ordered six items: Pan Fried Turnip Rice Cake, Scallop w/ Shrimp Dumplings, Steamed BBQ Pork Buns, Juicy Pork Dumplings, Crispy Dumplings and Shrimp Balls. In addition, we were also served tea and egg drop soup.

The egg drop soup basically tasted like water with corn starch in it. There was no flavor whatsoever. Even with some soy sauce, it was very bland.

Next up was the Pan Fried Turnip Rice Cakes. These are fried in pork fat, so there is some taste to it. Other than that, you will need some soy sauce to liven it up. It’s sticky and gooey and hard to eat with chopsticks.

The Scallop with Shrimp (more like Shrimp and just a little Scallop) was the next dish. Very tasty. The shrimp was in a rice wrapper which, when steamed, becomes slightly transluscent. On top of each shrimp was a quarter of a scallop with an unidentified yellow substance on top (the picture had something red). I luv shrimp, so my two pieces were gone in a flash! Tara had hers too.

Then the BBQ Pork steamed buns and Juicy Pork Dumplings came up. The Steamed Buns were hot and fluffy. This has a mixture of BBQ pork in the center of a rice flour based bun. The Juicy Dumplings lived up to their name as we bit into our dumplings and had “juice” go flying! But oh so tasty!

The Crispy Dumplings came up. These are your regular variety dumpling with pork. Greasy as you can see from the photos. 

Last but not least were the Shrimp Balls. I’ve never had these before so it was interesting. I was expecting something akin to Fish balls like I’ve seen in the markets. However, these were balls formed with minced shrimp which is then covered with strips of rice based wonton wrapper strips (think paper maché).  These balls hold their heat. I bit into mine and almost  burned the top of my mouth with them. The outer part was nice and crispy and the inside firm.

We took pictures using each camera as the food came to the table. I know several of the other patrons around us were probably wondering what the heck we were doing – but I didn’t care..I was enjoying my mean, having lunch with Tara and furthering my research on cameras.

The first set of pictures is from a Canon Powershot G2. Its an older camera, but has way more bells and whistles than my Nikon L3. The second set of photos is from the iPhone.

Canon Powershot G3: 

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iPhone: 

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S & W Seafood
5406 Walnut Ave
Irvine, CA 92604
949-262-0688
Hours: 11:00am to 10:00pm