Lei Garden, Washington, D.C.

Chinese people eat chicken feet. As a matter of fact, it's a pretty popular snack. There really isn't much to eat on a chicken foot, but they cook it anyway—twice, actually—and then savor the item. One of the more popular ways to prepare them is to boil or bake them in some kind of barbecue sauce, then they fry them. Then when it's time to eat, you sort of nibble the skin off the feet and suck the bones. They're really not that bad.

Where did we have chicken feet? Well, this week we went to Lei Garden in Chinatown for their luncheon dim sum offering. Dim sum is a meal made out of a series of appetizer-like small dishes, coming in quite a variety, and featuring a lot of dumpling and balls, as well as other things. As with many Chinese meals, foods are shared around the table. We've gone to several dim sum places in D.C., and Lei Garden pretty consistently has the best dim sum in the District. Some have told me there are some good places in Virginia, but we've not been yet, so I can't compare.





Here are some of the dim sum dishes we had. A couple of carts circulate around the dining room with fresh food, and diners get to pick which items they want.

You can see in the first picture a dish of chicken feet, some cooked pork chunks, and couple of different types of fried dumplings, and an interesting daikon radish dish in a sort of custard. In the second picture are steamed items, including some spinach dumplings and a fun shrimp dish enrobed in a thin pancake. The third picture shows some taro items, one a sort of croquette filled with bean paste and the other a seafood fritter coated in shredded taro.

Our waiter Min was very helpful and he directed the several waitresses pushing the carts around the dining room to keep our plates full and check for special requests. Service at Lei Garden is always very attentive. Hot tea is complimentary.

Dim sum is offered in the upstairs dining room at Lei Garden every day for lunch. Full menu service is available in the downstairs dining room.