Don't Put the Dim Sum Cart Before the Year of the Horse

An acquiescence to a good cup of tea had my dear brother and I exhausting every joint we had ever cased in Waterloo, having spent small fortunes on the cherriest of teas we ever had the pleasure of letting our good lips touch. Rarely do we ever see reason to leave our homes anymore, and today was no particular exception. But worn and eventually kind of hungry, I lobbied for a spot that caught my eye about a month ago, and if you dear readers know me, the things in the back of my mind always seem to get precedence. And if tea was a gratuity, we’d no reason to say no, and every reason to absolve any guilt for spending. But to be honest, today, between us two prodigal eaters, we barely spent a dime. Which is why I may like Empire Restaurant just a tiny bit more. That, and it has a really commanding, legendary, Kung Fu kind of name, to me anyway. Of course, it is Chinese, and of course, it’s located in that little oasis of Chinese food, Waterloo’s powerful little university plaza. Why restaurants haven’t uncut each other in price, I’ll never know. Then again, I’m not an economist, but by this point in history, Chinese food seems a farce in Waterloo. It’s mainland, it’s everywhere.

The draw to Empire was simple curiosity, and its surprise was a humble dim sum menu with arbitrary rising prices based on the alleged size of the foodstuffs. But hey, who cares, right? It has as healthy a menu as any other place, fried rice with shrimp and lunch meat, noodles, chow mein, ribs, steamed buns, egg tarts (pricier than I like), and on and on and on. I’m so complacent at this point, I’ve little concern if places like these ever last, because others will just take their place. 

The food isn’t bad, no; but it offers nothing different from anywhere else, really. It did have a residually decorated space, bare and neglected, which I always note as a good sincere sign of Chinese restaurant tourism. I can’t respect anyone that tries too hard when it comes to atmosphere, I’m only there to eat after all. Tables and chairs are all I ever need. 

We made for a small choosing, some coconut red bean pudding, sticky rice in lotus leaf, and some steamed pork buns, accompanied by a piping hot kettle of satisfying and complementary tea. So hot it heated our cups through. So hot we were playing a game to see who could hold onto his cheap porcelain longer.

Our pudding was simple, savoury, and sweet. Jellied coconut milk covered hardy sweetly boiled red beans, an otherwise satisfying choice, especially on a hot day- or so I imagine. Our steamed sticky rice wasn’t particularly dazzling. In fact, the pork stuffed centres' savouriness were a little off-putting for me, which I couldn’t for the life of me understand; and random hard-boiled egg yolk really did nothing for the rice texturally, except had my dear brother wondering what the hell the yellow stuff was. Alas. Still, we had to love that aromatic, nutty, lotus leaf wrapped rice. 

Lastly, our humble pork buns were a strange little sop of grub with no complexity, just two bizarre clashing flavours: barbecue pork with sweet bun, and a hint of what I thought was reminiscent of cinnamon. But we weren’t holding fine dining against the Empire, we were too busy oohing and aahing at wooden buckets rimmed with gold plastic rings and bowled with other curious stir-fry dishes. If I had any mind, I would have asked the locals what they were eating, but something told me my Whiteness would have scared them.

Yup, we had a little bit of everything: mystery, dim sum, tea. Today, we were easy to please, especially since we didn’t come expecting to put the cart before the horse.

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