Golden Coast

AMEN! While visiting friends in Memphis, we had to find out if there were any good dim sum restaurants to check out. We read a wonderful review on yelp while driving in on Friday and had our hearts set that even if our hosts' weren't interested, we would go for brunch one of the mornings. Thankfully, they both wanted to come, too!

We had a nice mixture of vegetable, meat, and dessert items. Favorites would have to be pork sticky buns, vegetable patty (we didn't catch what it was actually was but it looked like a pancake but with spinach or something green in it), bean curd dessert...we had so much, its hard to remember! We accidentally pointed at one dessert that was covered in coconut and had tons of coconut inside--unless you love coconut, I'd pass on that one. Broccolini was great and our pescatarian especially enjoyed the shrimp dumblings. Lots of pork for us meat-eaters to taste.

I appreciated that there weren't too many carts rolling around during our brunch at that most of the staff was able to communicate with us. It made for a wonderful first experience for one of our weekend hosts'--and left them looking forward to their return visit as well as introducing it to their Memphis friends. I only wish we had Golden Coast in Birmingham!!! It was a beautiful restaurant and definitely drew in a Sunday morning crowd. Well worth it!

If you're going to try dim sum at Golden Coast, there are a few rules. Rule number one: bring a friend (or two). Most of the items come in sets of two, three or four - three turnip cakes, for example, or four shrimp dumplings. If you want to try more than two things, you're going to need back up.

Rule number two: Don't be scared. Unless you're a dim sum regular, there are going to be some things on the menu that you're not familiar with. If something looks tasty, just order it and try it before you find out what it is (otherwise, you'll let your fear get the better of you).

And finally, rule number three: go to Golden Coast on the weekend. During lunch on Saturday and Sunday, you don't have to order from the menu. Friendly servers push carts loaded with food around the restaurant. When one passes your table, just flag them down and ask what they have. Also, if you can get a seat near the kitchen, do - when I was there during Sunday brunch, servers kept bringing hot dishes out from the kitchen to sell.

We started the meal with a big bowl of chicken and rice soup that was thick like porridge and had pieces of preserved duck egg. It was the kind of chicken soup that you want when you're super sick, the kind that can probably cure just about any ailment, physical or emotional.

After that, we had plates of shrimp dumplings and pork, shrimp and crab wrapped in thin steamed wrappers. There were lotus leaves folded into thick rolls and filled with chicken, sticky rice and pieces of sweet, meaty sausage that we opened like presents.

We ate fried buns filled with pork and delicate, lacy steamed buns filled with taro. There was a plate of clams in brown sauce that tasted a little like pepper steak. There was so much food, and it just kept showing up in covered silver bowls and on small white plates.

For dessert, we pulled a few selections from the three-tiered pastry cart. We got a plate of coconut Jello (at least, it tasted like coconut Jello, if Jello was thicker and had richer, more authentic flavor). We tried finger-shaped pastries filled with coconut cream and gelatinous taro balls filled with peanuts and shredded coconut.

If dim sum isn't your thing, you can order from Golden Coast's regular menu, which has traditional Cantonese dishes and seafood.

This is a really good Cantonese restaurant for the Memphis area. You can't compare this to LA or Atlanta... but still a decent place if you are craving for Chinese food. The flavor is on the salty side for my taste... but still pretty decent. The menu has great selections (includes many traditional Chinese dishes).

The service is great! Danny, our waiter is super nice and provides great service!

This is my family favorite place for dim sum and family dinner.

Closed with $127,000 judgement on door. Lots of chairs have been removed. I don't know where I will get my dim sum fix .

Dim Sum is what Cantonese people take to accompany their "morning tea" in the event of family/friends get-together, business dealings, or just being perfectly alone reading newspaper or watching people. It includes a wide variety of dishes, fried, steamed or baked, sweet or savory. Everybody has their must-order item(s) whenever they have Dim Sum.

Dim Sum making is skill-laden, time consuming, labor intensive, and sometimes requires special gadgets. A devoted and competent cook may be able to make a few items at home but for the most part, it's reserved for dining out. Not to mention it's relatively cheap compared to a formal meal.

One major obstacle in reviewing Dim Sum in English is the lingo. For example, "dumpling" is used to describe a variety of items with fillings wrapped in dough skins. In fact, they all have different names in Chinese/Cantonese and they differ in the type of skins used (different flour/water ratio in mixing dough, rice or wheat flour, wheat flour with or without gluten), fully enclosed or partial enclosed, steamed or fried. The nuances are lost in translation.

So here is my doomed attempt.

I have to say that the selection in Golden Coast is quite limited: 3 carts in all during Sunday brunch hours, the busiest time for Dim Sum consumption around the world, though back East they open for business at 6AM as opposed to 11AM here. One cart offers savory items, kept warm under covers on steamed baskets (some were fried first before being steamed); the second cart offers mostly sweet treats at room temperature, and the third cart contains mostly porridge.

The kitchen also sends out specialty items carried around by waiter/waitress every once a while, mostly because they taste better when served right off the stove. I recall seeing ground pork (mixed with shrimp) patties with Chinese chives, savory Daikon Radish rice cake (Law Bok Gow) and maybe meat and sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaf (Lo Mai Gai). Do ask for it if you know what you are looking for, or not.

On our most recent visit to Golden Coast, I ordered two of my personal favorites: Wu Gok (laced taro dumpling) and steamed riblets with black bean sauce. Out of consideration for my dining companion, I also ordered beef balls, stuffed bean curd (Tofu skin) rolls and beef tripe (ok, that's for me too). The stuffed bean curd rolls were below average because the meat filing was tough. The taro and meat mixture was a bit mushy in the taro dumplings. Tripe and beef balls were so-so. Riblets were decent and I think it was my shrimp-averse companion's favorite item that day. Just FYI, Cantonese love shrimp, so you will be hard pressed to find a savory filling without shrimp.

In all honesty, Dim Sum in Golden Coast leaves much to be desired, but it suffices as an introductory course. Asian Palace is another place in town serving Dim Sum and it's on a par with Golden Coast overall, though one might do better in a certain items than the other.

So, as Kerry C so nicely suggested, take a friend or two, try something weird and have a small culinary adventure, unless you have something better to do.

Thank you for reading. I will be brief next time.

I've heard a lot about the BBQ and fried goodness in Memphis but hardly anything in concerning Asian cuisine. Therefore, I honestly did not expect much in terms of Asian foods in Memphis. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find out there are a few restaurants that serve dim sum in Memphis. Dim sum is the Asian version of tapas that are usually served during brunch times. My bf parents treated us to dim sum at Golden Coast on a Friday afternoon. Golden Coast serves dim sum all day throughout the week. However, their weekday selection is more limited. Also, they only use dim sum carts during the weekend. Because we came on a Friday, we ordered dim sum off of the menu. So, it's not the full dim sum experience. Even so, I don't mind because at least I know the items will be served fresh as opposed to it having to sit on a cart for who knows how long.

I have lived in Atlanta where the Asian population is constantly burgeoning and there are plenty of large dim sum houses. If I were to compare Golden House with restaurants that serve dim sum in Atlanta, I would give it a 3 stars. However, for Memphis, I was pretty impressed with the dim sum selection. They had your standard shrimp dumplings, pork dumplings, tripe, chicken feet, taro cakes. They even had a few esoteric dishes like leek pies with shrimp stuffing.

In addition to the dim sum, we also ordered the Singaporean Noodles. It's a stir fry dish with thin rice vermicelli. It's slightly spicy with a curry taste. Our dish came with shrimp and bbq pork. It's quite tasty large enough to share between the four of us, with leftovers.

The food was great and coma inducing. I'd definitely come back here to find more authentic Chinese dishes.

I came here for dim sum with my inlaws and husband. I didn't have much of an expectation given the area, but I was pleasantly surprised. Though the selection was somewhat lacking compared to what I would get in SoCal, the food they did have was rather good.

I'm going to help the review of this place. One person idiotically badly reviews this restaurant that they have never been to because of live lobster. Another person reviewed that the Golden Coast was too expensive. IMHO, they are fairly inexpensive. They are usually half the price of what I would pay for dim sum outside of Memphis.

While this place isn't the best dim sum I've ever had, it's the best dim sum in Memphis. The food is good and they have my favorites - tripe, chinese broccoli, roasted pork buns, and my absolute favorite, chinese porridge with thousand year old egg!

Don't listen to the naysayers. Overall I really like this place and would recommend it as one of the more authentic Chinese restaurants in the area.

I just recently moved in Memphis and where I came from (Miami) there is a well known dim sum restaurant which has gotten great reviews because of its authenticity and atmosphere. This happens to be my favorite restaurant as well. So when I moved in Memphis I was somewhat concerned that I won't be able to experience the awesome food that was in Miami. This is until I went to golden coast. They offer the same authentic Hong Kong style cuisine dishes that not many typical Chinese restaurants have (snails!! They have snails!!) and their dim sum selections are endless. It's definitely an experience when you come and eat here so try to keep an open mind and try out new things. I can probably say that one of the few things they can work on is their short spare ribs. It was a bit peppery but other than that, this place is awesome.

http://www.memphisconnect.com/2011/04/08/dim-sum-get-some/

An update on my 540th visit to GC :) Still very much a favorite of mine!