I’d promised a review of another lunch at Grand Szechuan for last week but never got around to posting it. I’ve been terribly busy at work with early preparations for the second run of my Bombay-Seoul off-campus program and just did not have the time to resize all the pictures (this is also why I did not post any more reports from Delhi in March last week). And when it came time to post this week’s Twin Cities restaurant report, I decided to hold off a second Grand Szechuan report in less than a month—I’ll combine that report with that of our next visit (which will doubtless be before the summer). Here instead is my first-ever report on a new’ish Chinese restaurant in Minneapolis: Jade Dynasty. Specifically, it is a report on their dim sum offerings. Long-time readers know—and some take really personally—that I am not very high on dim sum in the Twin Cities. Did Jade Dynasty change my mind? Read on to find out.

Jade Dynasty, which opened a few months ago in Minneapolis’ Lyn-Lake neighbourhood in the old Fuji Ya space, represents the coming together of two veterans of the Twin Cities’ Chinese restaurant world. One half of the ownership team operated Nankin from the late 1980s to the late 1990s; and the other ran Hong Kong Noodles till 2021, when they sold it to new owners. Their new restaurant together is large and attractive and offers both a menu of Cantonese favourites and daily dim sum (at least, I think it’s daily). Their dim sum represents an innovation in the Twin Cities, in that they’ve eschewed the cart service model in favour of ordering off a picture menu. In general, this is a very good thing as while the chaos of the cart model can be endearing, in practice it often means food of variable quality as you have no idea how long the steamers on a cart have been circling the dining room before they get to you. With a la carte ordering, on the other hand, everything comes out as it’s ready and theoretically, at least, you are eating the kitchen’s output at its best. So, what was that output like?

In short—and please don’t yell at me, I’m very delicate—it was just about okay on the whole. Some things were good, some were just about acceptable, and a few were not good at all. Before I get into all of that though let me first hit you with a gallery of images that show the restaurant and both its dim sum and regular menus. After looking at it, scroll down to see what we actually ate and which items fell into which of the categories I noted above.

Restaurant and Menus

Alright, now let’s get to what we ate.

Dim Sum

The dim sum menu is a glossy picture menu. Each item is marked S, M, L or XL—and the prices for each category are on the side of the menu—and has a check box under it. You are given a marker and you check off everything you want and hand it to a server. If you want to eat things in a particular order then don’t do what we did and check everything off in one go because things will come out as they’re ready and not in a sequence that might make the most sense.

In order of arrival, here is what we ate:

• Baked BBQ Char Siu Buns. Three to an order, these were a promising start to the meal.
• Pork Shiumai. While the construction of the wrappers left something to be desired these were also acceptable on the whole.
• Chicken Feet. Three to an order, these were quite good. So much so that we placed a second order.
• Steamed Chinese Broccoli with Oyster Sauce. It’s really hard to screw this up and I am happy to say that Jade Dynasty did not.
• Stuffed Eggplant with Black Bean Sauce. This was another of the highlights of the meal. The stuffing involves shrimp paste.
• Pan-Fried Turnip Cakes. A dim sum classic, this was also done quite well.
• Steamed Rice Noodle Rolls with Shrimp. These, however, fell into the just about acceptable tier; the noodles were too dense and the whole lacked the delicacy that marks good versions of this classic.
• Pork and Century Egg Congee. This looked good but fell short. The texture and flavours were both too thin.
• Salty Pork and Sticky Rice in Lotus Leaf. This, on the other hand, was just not good at all. It looked good but when we cut into it the rice was gloppy rather than sticky and the flavours were watery.
• Shrimp Har Gow. These, however, were quite good.
• Pan-Fried Steamed Pork Buns. Execution on these was variable but they tasted quite good.
• Chiu Chow Dumplings. These looked good but, again, the filling was very gloppy.

For a look at everything we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down for thoughts on service and to see how much it all cost.

Service was very friendly and generally on top of things—all the way until the end when our server disappeared when it came time to pay. But it’s not like this was a big deal: we were still in and out of the restaurant in just about an hour. Price? Well, it was not a cheap meal as dim sum goes. A pot of tea for four plus 13 orders of dim sum (including 2x of the chicken feet), tax and tip brought the total to just north of $140. That’s just about $35/head. For context, we paid about the same for far superior dim sum across the board at City View in San Francisco last June (let’s not think too hard about the fact that we paid $91 for an outstanding meal at one of the outpost of Tim Ho Wan in Seoul last March…). This is also more than we pay for much better dim sum in Los Angeles. (I don’t know if you’ve heard but rent in San Francisco and Los Angeles is not low.)

Would we pay it again? In the abstract, I would say that the food we ate was not worth that price. But we don’t live in the abstract: we live in a metro area that does not have any dim sum restaurants that can compete with those in second-tier American cities, leave alone those in Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York. So if you want to eat dim sum and you don’t travel regularly to those places, you have to pick from what you have available. It’s no secret that I would never pick Mandarin Kitchen unless there were extenuating circumstances. And even though our last meal at Yangtze in 2023 was an improvement on our previous meal there, I would pick Jade Dynasty over them. For two reasons: 1) since we’re coming from the hamlets of northern Rice County, it’s a shorter drive; and 2) at least on this past Saturday, we did not have to wait. My tolerance of mid food is never very high but it’s particularly low when it arrives on the table after a 50 minute drive and an hour’s wait. For those of you who live in the Cities, the former is not much of a consideration but the lack of a wait may be.

All this said, I am curious about their regular menu. I’m assuming the dim sum is made by a separate crew (assuming it’s all made in-house) and so it’s entirely possible that the Cantonese dishes on the regular menu are much better. We might check that out sometime later this year. If you already have and have views you’d be willing to share, please write in below.

Alright, what’s next on the food front? I have failed in my pledge to get my Delhi reports done by the end of April, but will get at least one more out this week, if not two. Next week’s Twin Cities report will be of dinner at Myriel in St. Paul. We are scheduled to eat there with friends this weekend. Will it be better than our first meal there a few years ago? I’m certainly hoping so. Let’s see how it goes.