gimme some dim sum!!

Last weekend, I went out for sunday tea canton style with walt, gerrie and ruoying at the Golden Bridge restaurant in Chinatown. I've never had trouble with the wait for dim sum on saturdays, but sunday, i surmise, is family chow-time... tables of 8, 9, 10, 11, 12... they were all there, the kids, the adults, the grandparents and a random grandaunt here and there... luckily the wait for smaller tables weren't as long and we got seated after 15 minutes. phew...
Can't really remember much about the food, but remembered that it was uniformly good. I think the quality is a lot more uniform than a lot of dim sum palaces in Chinatown, e.g. Jing Fong, Mandarin Court etc. The steamed items were especially well made, although we were very disappointed about the lack of har gows in the menu. We must have been seated too far away from the kitchen, but the time the carts came rolling our way, the popular items (aka har gow) were taken away already. Disappointments about har gow aside, we ate... a. lot.
A sampling of the best golden bridge has to offer:

Weird looking fish.. Chinese style tempura... see the eyes staring right at' cha? Good crunch factor though...

Carrot Cake, crisp on the outside, soft and gooey, chockful of ingredients inside:

Ma lai Kou... my favorite... the tasty factor is unfortunately untranslatable through the photos...

And something others ate... we were too chicken to try:

Clams in the higher bucket and snails in the lower one... yummy, if you like extracting things from shells and then putting it into your mouth...

And in the typical fashion of a v. cost conscious person, i have to report that we spent a grand total of $8.50 each for a tummy-busting lunch... I believe its cheaper than jing fong (my standby dim sum pleasuredome) Other reasons why you should come to golden bridge? 2 simple reasons. 1. the cleanest female bathrooms in the whole of chinatown and 2. the picket line outside the restaurant, made up of former workers demanding unionization and better pay blah blah... We felt a rush defiantly striding past them into the restaurant for lunch... yah yah cheap thrill =)

Golden Bridge Restaurant

50 Bowery St (Canal and Bowery)