Chinatown: Dim sum at Empress Pavilion

Last Sunday morning was a dim sum outing to Empress Pavilion in Chinatown.  I hadn't had dim sum in quite a while, and had never been to LA's Chinatown.  Turns out that it's rather underwhelming, but I can't argue with some good dim sum that is a little closer than San Gabriel, Monterey Park or Arcadia.  Empress Pavilion is huge (Jon compared it to a Costco) and predictably busy during weekend brunch hours, but we were still able to get a table within 10 or 15 min after our first group member arrived.

Various steamed dumplings, including shao mai (top left), xia jiao (middle), something with dried shrimp (bottom left) and something with chives (bottom right):

Some sort of fried shrimp dumpling, and taro dumplings (one of my favorite):

The aforementioned, plus rice noodle rolls:

Empress Pavilion serves several dim sum items "to order," namely plates of boiled Chinese broccoli (extremely important as a green counterpart to all the other steamed/fried protein-heavy offerings), as well as fried turnip cakes as shown below:

In addition to all the standard dim sum offerings, there were also pearl milk teas being wheeled around on the carts; apparently they were good, but quite sweet.  We tried some egg tarts for dessert, being too full for anything else, and they were satisfyingly fresh.  Including tip, the bill came to $13 per person.  I forsee many more dim sum excursions over the next several years!