Foodsday Tuesday: [Dim] Sum 4[Every]1

About ten days ago, I was able to live out a fantasy of mine (not that kind, you perv): I had the perfect Sex and the City brunch. That is to say, the company was straight from SATC, not the food. (I was with three girlfriends: a "Miranda," a "Samantha," and a "Charlotte." I'm happy being the "Carrie," so long as I don't have to grow SJP's nose to play the role.) We got the opportunity to talk about all the things that they talk about on SATC (read: boys), which was awesome enough. But we got to do it over some truly fantastic dim sum, which made the whole experience even better.

The weekend before, I discovered dim sum at the Imperial Inn in China Town, and decided right away that I needed to return, as soon as possible. And fortunately, I was in charge of choosing the brunch place for our long-awaited SATC reunion (we'd been trying to get all four of us in the same room since December). And so, up to 146 North Tenth we all headed. We were seated surprisingly quickly (or maybe it was just surprising because the week before was the Chinese New Year and we'd had to wait a long time for a table) and brought water and tea almost as soon as we reached our table.

We were at the back of the smaller of two upstairs dining rooms at the restaurant, which I'm inclined to blame as the reason it took so long for the first dumpling-laden cart to make its way toward us. But the dim sum there is worth the wait. (I've heard bad things about the Imperial Inn's regular menu, but not the dim sum.) We dined on, among other things, grilled eggplant, shrimp balls, stuffed peppers, dumplings, egg rolls, sticky rice stuffed with meat, rice noodles, and, most importantly (we WAITED for these—they're my favorite), pork sticky buns, then finished the whole thing off with sponge cake and some sort of custard-filled steamed dough that was amazing. Okay, so we passed up the more "authentic" dishes, like tripe and chicken's feet, but at least one of us was trying something new with each dish we got off the dim sum cart.

Oh, and the best part of it all?

When our check came, we ended up spending about twelve dollars apiece—including tax and tip.

The ladies of SATC had a regular brunch location, and we've already decided that the Imperial Inn will be ours.

Imperial Inn
146 North Tenth Street
Dim sum served daily until mid-afternoon.

UPDATE: Imperial Inn was just named the best Chinese restaurant in Philadelphia by AOL City Guide.

Image via WorldCountries.info. Oh, and apologies for the post's title this week. When we're tired, "clever" often comes out as "weird"...