Hoicin Cantonese Restaurant: Pea Shoots and Crab! Oh boy!

Hoicin Cantonese Restaurant
9555 Folsom Boulevard
Sacramento, CA 95827-1207
(916) 369-8915

Hoicin Cantonese Restaurant is an outpost of authentic Chinese food away from the usual Sacto strongholds of Broadway and Stockton boulevard. I'm glad its there: the menu is extremely interesting, the family who runs the place is friendly, and the space is unusually salubrious for a Cantonese joint. Prices are higher then bog standard for Cantonese food, but I think on the whole, its worth it.



On our recent visit, we decided to sample the steamed scallion chicken, a delightfully subtle Cantonese speciality. I've made it before, and it's not a tremendously difficult thing to prepare: the trick is boiling it with the right combination of spices, just long enough. I like the subtle anise-scallion-ginger-soy flavor infused into the chicken meat, and the yellow, unctuous fattiness of the skin - it's all gravy to me. In classic Chinese style, the chicken is whacked apart into about fifteen thousand pieces prior to serving. Don't bite down too fast.




This is the spicy eggplant seafood casserole ($12.49), your standard Cantonese style hot-pot in a claypot. This one was composed of prawns, scallops, squids, eggplant, ginger, and scallion in the restaurant's speciality sauce, and was about standard-issue for this dish. For me, I like this kind of dish but it gets a little greasy for my personal taste: in any case, Hoicin's version is high quality and full of a lot of different stuff.



Steamed pea-greens with crab meat egg white sauce ($14.49), one of my favorite vegetable dishes. Something about the combination of leafy greens and sweet crab meat with a bit of egg is delightfully comforting, possessing the particularly Cantonese combination of squashy and crunchy and oily in one dish. They give you a rather gigantic amount of vegetables and crab for your money, which is always nice (and reminiscent of mainland China, where ginormous portions are pretty much de-rigeur). It's a seasonal dish, so nab it quickly.

Keep Hoicin in mind if you find yourself seized for a desire for Chinese food away from the oases of Midtown and Stockton. I believe they do take-out as well, which means you've got no excuse for failing to upgrade from the usual chow mein and sweet n' sour emporiums that dominate the area.

New Canton: Sunday Dim Sum, Human Existence is Secured

New Canton Restaurant
2523 Broadway
Sacramento, CA 95818-2658
(916) 739-8888

Dim Sum on Sunday's is delightful, something natural. I remember going for dim-sum when I was 8 years old or so in Atlanta: there were cart-ladies, shrimp toasts with sesame seeds stuck to them, big squashy pork-buns, spareribs, on and on. The dining hall functioned at a volume normally restricted to air-force bases, and it was huge, at least to my underexperienced eyes. I have enjoyed dim-sum ever since. I've had it in one of the soul-centers for the stuff - Hong Kong - and was delighted to find the Sunday dim sum tradition is not particularly dissimilar from place to place. (There was nearly a riot over chicken buns at the joint in Hong Kong, of course... "They're from the country, they don't know better," our table mate informed us with a derisive wave - but riots are not a neccessity for dim sum enjoyment, not at all.)

New Canton is one of Sacramento's few dim sum outlets, and it does a pretty good job. There are the requesite carts, the crowds of loud shouting people, the fresh-fish tank, the jellyfish salad and steamed chicken feet and thousand-year-egg congee. Roast pork and duck are of course available for the masses.


Chicken feet, always about the goddamned chicken feet (fung zau).. They're pretty good here: large, flavorful, dipped in sauce. They are a total bitch to pick up with chopsticks, but one learns the technique eventually. You may recall the recent news story regarding the Chinese indignation that we might curtail their chicken-foot supply: American chickens have such "big, fat" feet.



Minced scallops in a fried dumpling. Pretty good, and thankfully served warm enough. Chilled fried stuff that's been circumnavigating around on carts for the past hour is never good.


Shrimp dumplings or har gau, a perennial favorite. Quite good here. They're one of those things that no one dreams about but are unavoidable in practice.


Seaweed salad and some sort of glutinous thing flavored with sesame I cannot identify. I happen to deeply enjoy glutinous things flavored with sesame, so this was a hit for me. Nice to have something chilled to go with the other dishes.


Fried salt and pepper shrimp (椒鹽蝦) head-on, the way God made em'. Very nice, and hot enough - don't bother if they are not piping hot. If you don't eat the heads, you're missing out on a delicious, fatty treat. Same principle as suckin' crawdad heads.


Fried dumplings with crab inside and an extremely crispy interior. Pretty good, though skip the sweet n' sour sauce, there ain't no excuse for that.


Spareribs with black bean sauce (pai gwhut). Bony, fatty, oh-so-comforting. Can't have dim sum without em'.


Char siu, or BBQ pork. New Canton does very good BBQ pork and duck - it's one of their specialities -and this was no exception, with a nice smoky flavor and a carefully balanced ratio of fat to meat.

Serve all this with copious amounts of tea, and all is right with the world. We found that going at noon beats the AM rush - a good idea if you're not interested in fighting to be heard over a sea of excited Cantonese conversation. On the other hand, sometime you are.

Capital Tea Garden: Midtown Chicken Feet!

Capital Tea Garden
Sacramento, CA
1110 T Street
Sacramento, CA, 95814
916-448-1218

The Capital Tea Garden is a diminuitive Chinese joint in downtown Sacramento. The menu sets it apart from its chow-mein and orange-chicken slinging compatriots by the addition of some authentic Chinese dishes. There's even dim-sum, available any time of the day, although you'll have to do without the carts. The decor alone lets you know you're visiting an authentic Chinese joint- as my friend Kevin said about the place, it is profoundly Hong Kong hash house in there.


A very hefty portion of chicken feet. I love chicken feet, although they're a real bitch to pick up with chopsticks. These were just okay. The black bean sauce was definitely not enough in evidence. But the phenom of being able to order a mega-huge portion of poultry feet in downtown Sacramento is a pleasing one.


Pea greens cooked in a simple ginger-garlic sauce. God, I love these suckers. They're fairly seasonal - can't get em' all the time - and they must be pounced upon and devoured when they are in. The flavor is a combination of stalky spinach and broccoli, with a verdant, fresh snap.


Mixed seafood in X.O sauce. X.O sauce, in case you were wondering, is a salty and umami ridden Chinese condiment, made of dried chopped seafood with chili, onion, and garlic. Formerly a prestigious condiment for Hong Kong's very rich, it's trickled down to the plebes, and is often marketed in the same fashion as French liquor in Asia (!). I highly recommend giving it a shot. It's only a teeny bit funky. This was a pretty good rendition, though the flavor of the X.O sauce could have been stronger.


Salt toast shrimp and asparagus, a perennial favorite around here. Sadly only okay. Why in the sam hill did they remove the heads? Don't they know those are the best part? I also thought there was too much batter going for what can be a charming ethereal dish. Still would be good if one is hungover. I suspect hangovers make up a healthy portion of the Capital Tea Garden's business.


A claypot with salty chicken, eggplant, and Chinese sausage. Aside from the obvious non-claypot status of this dish, it was quite tasty. I'm always big on Chinese casseroles, which tend to have a delightfully intense, unctuous flavor. Good and rich, although as always heavier on the eggplant then on the other stuff.

On the whole, the Capital Tea Garden is a pretty good choice for authentic Chinese food in the Midtown area. With cheap prices and a no-atmosphere sort of atmosphere, I can see myself returning again.