...and as a follow up to the abalone dinner Saturday night, I took the folks to Koi Palace for dim sum the following day. As usual everything was excellent...the king of shumai (shumai with dried scallops, pork, shrimp, and topped with sharks fin), the perfect har gow. We had some "monkey picked tikuanyin tea" that was fun to order and actually quite flavorful.
The outstanding dish was the whole crab shanghai dumpings. They took an entire dungeness crab, picked out the meat from the body and made shanghai dumplings (aka xiao long bao/soup dumplings) from them. There was no pork in the dumpling, just pure dungeness crab. The legs and claws were deep fried. We felt that this was actually superior to the whole lobster dumplings that they serve (taking the whole lobster to make steamed dumplings).
I would recommend dumpling aficionados try this version. The crab meat was sweet and succulent and the skin was thin and chewy...yet another reason why I don't hesitate to fly my parents up from LA just for a weekend of Koi Palace.
Halloween