Smaller teapots shouldn’t surprise people. Traditionally, gong fu cha “the way of tea,” serves tea in thimble sized cups from small pots, the point being that the tea is steeped quickly and repeatedly throughout your meal. So your server should’ve been vigilant about your water levels. The best teas actually get better by the third steeping.

Stu, if you want to join in on the Sat and Sun morning dim sum clamor, you should check out the Golden Dragon on Main Street. I was never really a fan until a few weeks ago when my friends and I started going regularly. Apparently, there’s a new chef and new management. They have all BBQ pork buns and other good and familiar items but then surprise you with carts filled with covered plates of fried pork belly (crispy crispy crackling), the ox blood soup, really nice seafood and vegetables. Wonderful teas at no extra cost, I believe.

One of my dim sum cohorts hails from Berkeley and she even took her overly-critical/discerning Chinese mother to this place. Mom totally loved it — thought it was close to what she had back in Oakland and Berkeley. (We’ll never get complete props from Bay Area folk!)

It was better than I expected for SLC and indeed a pleasant meal. I would not compare it to other top tier N.American cities in terms of dim sum (Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver and San Francisco). They serve the basics up and done competently…and you can get some of the more old school items. Tripe and steamed chicken feet are slowly disappearing off dim sum menus (falling out of flavour).

The chicken feet were better than average actually…even for HK. The rice noodle rolls were slightly below average for N.America…they are always difficult to eat but the texture wasn’t quite right consistency compared to better versions. The shrimp dunplings were averagish. The shrimp were decent for N.American dim sum but the skin/wrapper was softer than most. The chive shrimp dumpling had a nice balanced filling but same wrapper.