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Philly’s Best Dim Sum at New Harmony, Chinatown

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     Philadelphia’s Chinatown is packed with vegetarian-friendly restaurants, and while they are uniformly decent, some stand out from the pack. New Harmony is one of those standouts. Specializing in vegetarian mock meats and seafood, as well as insanely good steamed buns and dumplings, this is one of the (very) few non-Szechuan Chinese restaurants I’ll go to excitedly. Owned by Ming, the nicest restaurant proprietor this side of anywhere, New Harmony mixes crazy good, greasy comfort food with a casual atmosphere and, on Thursday, a doughnut delivery from Vegan Treats. I know. 

PictureGive me all of it, please and thank you

      One of the best deals in town is New Harmony’s all-you-can-eat Dim Sum for $12 per person. You get to order from the pictured dim sum menu – but it’s not like ‘choose two measly items from section A, one from B’ or any kind of limiting crap like that. You can have every single item, and as much of each as you want. (Strangely, I’ve never actually gotten every item, or asked for more of something, because there is always so, so much amazing food. But…challenge accepted? No?)  The dim sum menu is always so hard to pass up, because two of the restaurants best dishes – the sesame beef and the steamed pork buns – are on it, so there’s no reason to order off the menu. (Actually, there are about 60 other reasons…)


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Vegetable and bean curd soup
      The sesame chicken tasted great and had a wonderful texture, like most mock chicken nugget-things at Chinese restaurants. But the sesame beef is the restaurant’s big deal. It’s crunchy and chewy, and it’s covered in a surprisingly mustardy cream sauce that just works even though it seems like it shouldn’t. So so good. 

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Sesame beef
    Next, we took a needed pause between the glutinous rounds with some standard steamed and besauced vegetables. More broccoli! Chinese cabbage! Good stuff. Then came my favorite part of any meal: the steamed buns and dumplings. Hooo boy, how great are steamed doughy things holding fillings? So great. We had a mix of pork buns, vegetable buns, spinach dumplings, shrimp dumplings, and vegetable dumplings. 
       I’ve had the hot & sour soup several times, and it’s really great, as is the wonton. This time, I tried the vegetable and bean curd soup. It was nice and simple, perhaps not very exciting, but a good starter before all the heavier food. It was a little salty for me, which is my #1 gripe about Chinese food (actually, about restaurant food in general), and I would have preferred a thinner broth. But I’d get this again. It was nice to have broccoli before the storm hit. 

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Sesame chicken

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Vegetables. Nice.
      The two different kinds of buns were absolute perfection. Next time, I’d order all the buns and forego the dumplings. The latter are great, don’t get me wrong, but they don’t stand out from the standard veg dumpling scene. The buns, however, are tremendous. I want 20 of them now. 
     I also loved the final thing we got, the bean curd skin rolls. Okay, so bean curd skin (aka tofu skin) sounds disgusting, I’ll give you that. But it’s so strangely delicious. Over the past few years, I’ve become somewhat obsessed with the stuff, in soups, in sushi rolls, in life. But I’ve never had it act as the wrapping in a spring roll-type of thing. 

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They look like fun/weird sea creatures
     The rolls were so interesting! Just like a spring roll, it contained a gingery, garlicky mix of stringy cabbage and what not, but instead of fried, greasy wonton exterior, it was the chewy beyond chewy tofu skin. Ok, it sounds gross, but it was really good! 
       We were too full to order the dim sum menu desserts, and wayyy too full to order the absolutely mind-blowing specialty of fried cheesecake (from Vegan Treats, but fried in-house) off the regular menu. But Ming informed us that the Vegan Treats doughnut delivery had just come in, so we pretty much bought out his stock (to go, of course). Then, he kindly brought us little dishes of strawberry ice cream, which is sourced from Klein’s, the best soy ice cream maker. It was a nice way to end a deliciously indulgent, yet affordable, dinner. 

NEW HARMONY, Philadelphia’s Chinatown 

  • Water speed: Doing Chinese restaurants proud
  • Bathrooms: One shared, not the nicest but it works at least
  • Service: Great. It may have helped that my companion is likethis with Ming, and he waited on us, but it’s usually great.
  • Food: Comforting, rich, heavy but doesn’t leave you feeling sick
  • Bonus: Copious amounts of dim sum for $12…and Vegan Treats! 
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