Sacramento Dim Sum Brightens a Sleepy Saturday

Sacramento dim sum at New Canton Restaurant on Broadway

The ultimate Sacramento dim sum experience would be to rollover in bed, tap my food delivery app and within minutes my doorbell rings. At least that was my lazy-ass thinking yesterday. Drizzly rain, overcast and suddenly ravishingly craving dim sum. I downloaded the doordash app, which lets you order food from a wide variety of restaurants in Sacramento. We have several food deliver service companies in town, but most of them show a 45-minute to 60-minute delivery time, and I was hungry now.

Further, ordering via a food delivery app meant deciding what I wanted right then and there, and half of the enjoyment of Sacramento dim sum is picking what you want to eat when it is presented in front of you. Madam, do you care for this plate of drizzled chicken feet? Oh, no, thank you. Take it away. Choices. You have choices. And choices are good. Choices can make you feel in control, even when the world around you is crumbling. Like, when you look at Twitter and it’s so depressing, and you consider unfollowing the news and following only cute animal feeds or panda cams but you don’t want to end up like Gary Johnson.

Instead I looked at my phone and spotted an email from one of my team members. A random real estate agent sent a backup purchase offer to the wrong person because she did not read the confidential agent remarks in MLS. In addition, if she had bothered to read the agent remarks, she would have noted the other documents that needed to accompany her offer, including the price at which she needed to submit for acceptance, so she went through all of that work for nothing. I forwarded the offer to my sellers with the suggestion they ignore it.

And with that, I set down my book, Annals of the Former World, which I will talk about another day, and my husband and I drove down the street to New Canton Restaurant on Broadway for Sacramento dim sum. The first person we met was the guy who used to work at Fortune House on Broadway, which has since closed. Such a cheery helpful person. Always happy to see us.

We tend to order too much at Sacramento dim sum. Our eyes seem bigger than our stomachs. Perhaps that only applies to me, now that I pause to reflect. My husband most likely plans for future meals when he over-orders. But that did not stop me from picking something new. A serving cart stopped by my side of the table. Would you like a lobster tail, the server asked? Well, what kind of question is THAT? Of course I would like a lobster tail. Yes, yes, put it here.

Instead of plucking one or two pieces off the enormous platter of deep-fried lobster tail and carefully arranging the dim sum on its own cute little serving dish, our server slammed the entire platter on the table. Right next to the Gai Lan with oyster sauce and Cheong rice noodles with shrimp. You sometimes gotta clarify what you ask for.

You know, I just go with the flow. There are other fish to fry, apparently. If you’re looking for a Sacramento Realtor, though, please give Elizabeth Weintraub a jingle at 916.233.6759.