Sum like it NOT

Any real connisseurs of dim sum will know that Paris has a serious lack thereof. Nothing beats the hangover from a Friday night session or the Sunday blues quite like an assortment of bamboo steamers all filled with delightful little steamed parcels. A wide variety of shrimp, pork, or beef compositions wrapped in a delicate envelope of flour pastry and succulently steamed to give a bite sized piece of heaven. Dim sum literally means "small heart" and despite the fact that we Chinese are famous for eating pretty much anything, nose to tail, it is more an expression of the way in which these small parcels of joy touch the heart when cooked properly.

Sure, there are a plenty of "Restaurant Asiatique" which boast a variety of pho, nems thailandais, sushi and riz cantonnais all under one roof: One-stop shops for anything east of India. However, anyone who has sampled real Cantonese dim sum in Hong Kong, or even in any of the major cities which benefited from the influx of Hongkies in the 70s and 80s such as London, New York, Melbourne, Vancouver, San Francisco or Amsterdam will know that for all it's virtues, Paris is one har kao steamer short of a dim sum cart. Even in the 13th arrondisement, The Chinese Quarter of Paris, or up and coming Belleville, the standard and variety is just not there.

So it was with mild aspiration that I decided to try a place near Invalides which I stumbled across with my wife one time before. As I arrived with a colleague and a friend (one a former expat in Hong Kong for 2 years, and the other a regular dim sum-er in London), the tables were full of Chinese diners and there were a couple of other crowds of Chinese tourists making their way in. Surely a good sign right? Yes and no. The cuisine of China is as vast and diversified as the country and people within. The diners were all Mainland Chinese tourists who undoubtedly thought the cuisine was fantastic, but who also have a different palate to the Cantonese. The name "Restaurant Shanghai " was the first clue. The second being the fact that we were the only ones to order steamed dumplings, with everyone else in the restaurant unanimously going for rice and various dishes of meat, veg and fish.

As was to be expected in such circumstances, we were presented with a dozen steamers of what were undoubtedly frozen pre-made dumplings which had been keep in the freezer for the unlikely scenario that someone might happen to see the photos on the menu and assume the place served dim sum. The dumplings were not terrible but then the standard in Paris is pretty low.

For me the barometer of a decent dim sum resturant is the har kao. These are prawn dumplings wrapped in a white, often transluscent rice flour pastry. Some of the best I have tried have a couple of juicy, fresh whole prawns inside and are wrapped in a pastry thin enough to justify their name "Crystal Har Kao" but firm enough to not fall apart when picked up. Some of the worst have dry, tasteless minced prawn (no doubt bulked up with a bit of cheap cod and cornflour) wrapped in a thick chewy substance which can only be described as glue in a more stable form. Restaurant Shanghai was closer to the latter than the former. All the steamers were served with a lettuce leaf at the bottom to stop the dumplings sticking to the bottom. All this did however, was to present the sticky little buggers on a limp over-cooked mush of lettuce. If you ever want to try this at home, the trick is to use thin slices of carrot.

Although we ordered only 8 steamers, 12 came and on reflection, I still don't know what was inside a couple of them. Suffice to say that they all tasted pretty similar, all had a bit of pork of prawn in mixed up with some vegetables, and all had chewy overly-thick pastries. The one that they did manage to get right was the Shanghai soup dumplings - which kind of makes sense given the name of the restaurant. These are great little pork dumplings a small amount of piping hot, tasty soup inside. There were a couple of fried dishes (a deep fried won ton and spring rolls) which were ok - but then these are generally hard to get wrong.

I thought the disappointment had reached it's climax by the end of the meal but there was still time for one  more shock to the system. Restaurant toilets in Paris tend not to be the best of facilities - none more so than in Chinese restaurants. This one however, was like nothing I'd ever seen. Aside from being inside a dirty and smelly cubile (standard) the toilet itself was blocked as only half the users had heeded the notice to not throw paper down the hole. The other half had proceeded to throw the paper on and around the overfilled bin. As this is a food blog, I'll leave readers to imagine the sight that greeted me and leave it at that.

Restaurant Shanghai, 36 Rue Fabert (Metro La Tour Maubourg) is certainly one to avoid. For obvious reasons, this blog entry consists of no pictures.