Monday, March 8, 2010
First Bite First Bite: Lucky Bamboo Restaurant is a Fortunate Find
Posted by Nicki Wood on Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 1:26 PM
Add to the (very short) list of places to get weekend dim sum: Lucky Bamboo. It's been open for about a month in the vast space between K&S and Miss Saigon on Charlotte Pike, but on Sunday the parking lot was packed. I've never seen it that crowded in 10 years of visiting this shopping center, even when the Kroger was open.
Considerable investment has been made in the look of the place: the pagoda-esque bamboo façade, more bamboo architecture inside, murals, a big aquarium and a pool with a fountain. Lucky Bamboo put money into its good looks -- that would give it plenty of entertainment value. It reminded me of the old Blue Hawaii on White Bridge Road for the two of you longtime residents who might remember it.
The inside is big, with a front room and a back room. Eyeballing it, let's call it 20 to 30 percent bigger than La Hacienda. But butts were in the seats on Sunday for traditional dim sum. The servers apologized that the dim sum carts were moving slowly, but dim sum isn't speedy anywhere, and the timing seemed, well, timely.
Just a five-minute wait and the congee cart arrived bearing congee made with pork and thousand-year-old egg, nicely made fun gor (stuffed with collard greens, for an off-putting whiffy smell when cut them open), shrimp dumplings, pork sui mai. The next cart had char siu buns, delicious chicken feet, egg rolls and more. There were sweets, too.
Our six dishes were just $14 and tip, and we'll definitely go back.
Comments (22)
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Mine was really pretty good. I've had better fun gor in New York, and better chicken feet in London, and there wasn't the enormous selection (and especially seafood) you'd get in Seattle. It was a good enough selection (probably 24 items), it was carefully made and it arrived quickly. They were sold out of salted duck, which gives us a good reason to return, and we want to try the menu, too, which gives us another reason.
What about the vegetarian selection? I'm a little anxious at many Asian places because their idea of vegetarian and mine aren't always the same (fish and chicken stock are not vegetarian) and that gets lost in translation.
Hopefully it’s not a bust like the place on Nolensville. Nikki, did you notice soup dumplings?
Hey - Youse gotta car or sumpin? Get offa you ass and take a ride over there. It is not our job to do your bidding for your special Chinese specialty.
I did - I inquired about Char Siu Bao.
Jing only.
I have both the Yank and Chinese versions of their menu.
You can too.
@Lesley, I only tried the dim sum, and it was totally not vegetarian friendly. Maybe a West Side Bites visit to eat the regular menu? For the good of the blog?
Dr. Woo, you know, without the final "d" in my last name, I'm a Woo, too. Woo hoo.
No soup dumplings that I saw, and I'm curious about whether the offerings will change week to week.
I ate at Lucky Bamboo twice mid-afternoon, mid-week, last week—so both times off the menu. The first time I ordered Double Cooked Pork off the Americanized menu. It was good, but it wasn't anything to go crazy over.
The next time I went back I practiced some of the Chinese I have been learning in school, and was promptly offered the Chinese menu. I ordered the ma po dofu, and I practically licked the plate. It was great! A friend and me have plans to go this Thursday and I already know I'm going to be trying the dong po pork.
Even if Lucky Bamboo fails to out-do the Chinese restaurants I used to eat at when I lived in DC or those I've eaten at when visiting NYC or San Francisco, I am still going to be there at least once a week. I am just so happy to be able to get some of these traditional dishes here in Nashville.
Make sure to ask for the Chinese menu.
Dr. Woo--thanks for not holding out with the info. Baby Eats makes it a little difficult to run errands. She's in that awkward phase between being inside my uterus and not needing to be carried everywhere.
Nicki--I didn't think I'd get lucky. Dim Sum for me means going to NYC, which is only slightly more difficult than going to Lucky Bamboo. Ha!
I have to confess, dim sum intimidates me as much as when I thought I was the only person on the planet who had not yet seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show and therefore didn't want to go at midnight to see it and wind up being outed by all the dressed up play acting devotees. It is equal to when sushi first arrived and you didn't know if you would like it, let alone have a clue as to what to order or what you were actually eating without looking like a total goombah, and yet somehow you were the only person who had yet to participate in the new Friday night ritual.
and as with dim sum, so it is with asking for the "chinese menu".
so help the uninitiated here, please, because the words you type are meaningless to me. How do I know what I'm getting, either on the carts or the 'chinese menu', is english present anywhere, or is it a total crap shoot for someone who is as ignorant as I ?
and Doctor Woo, thanks to you I am now lost in Steely Dan song bites. Are you with me, Doctor ? :)
@SL: good point. There are/were originally photos of the food to go with this post but it would have been really long. Fun gor (spelled fun qur on Bamboo's menu) is a homemade rice flour dumpling stuffed with goodies. When steamed, the rice flour becomes transparent and it looks like a breast implant.
Sui mai is a wheat wrapper into which a seasoned pork mixture is stuffed, then steamed. It's open at the top.
Congee is Chinese breakfast porridge made from broken rice cooked in chicken broth or with pork a long time until it's oatmeal-like. Thousand-year-old eggs are just funky. They're salted down and aged, and they have a shiitake mushroom texture except they dissolve in your mouth.
If enough people care, I'll post the photos of the dim sum stuff. The breast implants are especially photogenic.
We were just talking about Blue Hawaii this weekend---I hadn't thought about that place in ages!
Am I just dreaming or didn't Blue Hawaii used to be called "Mahi Mahi" or something like that either before or after it was Blue Hawaii?
I was more of a Sailmaker man myself...
Mahi Mahi, or Blue Mahi or something, right! It was a great date place, and the food was old school Sino-Nippon-Hawaiian: sweet and sour everything, moo goo gai pan, chop suey, and pineapple in half the dishes. And blue drinks with umbrellas.
Was the Sailmaker the one with the Salad Bar Boat and Spinnakers the one with the flower pot bread? Or the other way around (or neither)...
You got it right, Pogo. For us Westmeade kids in the 70's the Sailmaker was the epitome of fun fine dining. Once they stopped dressing up the servers in costumes and eliminated most of the theme rooms, it wasn't nearly as much fun.
As a matter of fact it became just like, well...Pargo's.
The Sailmaker! Feeding the fish was always a highlight. Wow that makes me feel old!
We ate Dim Sum at Lucky Bamboo two weekends ago and it was obvious they have some kinks to work out. Our server forgot to charge us for duck and beef dishes (we pointed it out!), but it apparent she was going through training. The food was good, but there wasn't a huge variety and some carts seemed to skip our table, like the fried chicken feet.
The atmosphere is a nice departure from the typical red and gold dark Chinese restaurant design. I expected it to be a little more funky like Kien Giang, since it is in the same strip mall, but it is a little "nicer".
I'm hoping Lucky Bamboo continues to improve as they get going, and am looking forward to trying the menu next time.
I have been there five times and have found the food on the American menu too sweet and the sauces lackluster. I am not really liking the service either. It's VERY unstandard and inconsistent. Sometimes I get soup with my dinner and sometimes not. There seems to be diffused responsibility between the staff on who does what. That needs to change. Service is also slow. I REALLY want this place to be successful, but soo far I'm not that impressed. I miss the authentic Chinese place is Hickory Hollow (China Chef). They were smaller but the food wqas ten times better. I'm a Chinese food coineseur! I also remember Chu near Vanderbilt being very good. To sum it up: 1)REWORK the sauces so not as sweet AND to where one can tell there's ginger or garlic in the sauce (little pieces) and 2) Train your staff to be knowledgeable about the dishes, what sections they serve and jobs they must do, and make them do it faster!
Brett,
There are many of us who miss China Chef. I miss the 5 flavor eggplant and my kids miss the Peking Duck. BTW, the cart guy at Lucky Bamboo this Sunday assumed I wouldn't want the chicken feet and would have skipped right over them had I not emphatically made my wishes known. But they were definitely worth the effort!
I am going to Lucky Bamboo's tonight, and appreciate all the comments. I love chinese food but am used to the one in Green Hills...behind what used to be the donut shop. I suspect to true experts that is really not "authetic" chinese. The idea of chicken feet is scarey for me...hope I find something i like.
