A trip to ByWard for soup dumplings
The air was quite crisp, but the sun was shining brilliantly and warmly: Sunday was a perfect day for a trip to Sammi & Soupe Dumpling in the ByWard Market.
Before heading there, I popped into Lapointe Fish and picked up a few items, both fresh and frozen. It’s a nice small shop for a wide range of fish and seafood and accompanying accoutrements (but perhaps mid-week is better for selection).
A hundred metres away is Sammi’s, a venue I’ve visited before but have come to really like. The place was packed for Sunday lunch (at about 12:45 p.m.) with a queue of about six people waiting just inside the door (and outside on the sidewalk, brave souls that they were).
There’s seating — tables and banquettes — for, I’d say, just over 50 soup dumpling-lovers in the tight and cozy confines of the basic dining room. It’s not so much an old brick-and-beam building as it is brick-and-bamboo steamer basket.
If you go, don’t bring a long coat, if possible: short-backed chairs, which scrape noisily on the tile floor, will mean you have to sit on the garment, or have it drag on the grainy and winter-salted floor when you sling it over the back of your seat.
A Montreal-based operation, the Sammi’s menu has about two dozen dumplings, from pretty straightforward pork and cabbage to lamb and coriander. In munching a few dozen soup dumplings — xiao long bao — only one or two malfunctioned and leaked.
Another favourite (and, by the looks of what was served around me, popular choice) is pan-fried dumplings with a crisp lacy “web” that adds a gentle crunch in their texture, something not found in a soup dumpling.
A cold noodle appetizer with a “peanut butter” sauce was the only fail of the visit: the noodles were cooked perfectly with added cucumber slivers for texture but overall the dish was flat in flavour (which I simply amped up by dumping in a few teaspoons of chili oil).
Otherwise, there are a few entrees and a chocolate xiao long bao for dessert (no thanks), but I’m at Sammi’s for the simplicity of dumplings.
All in all, a good visit — despite quirky service that seemed to forget what we ordered and the order it should come in — that makes it a place I will come back to when the dumpling crave hits.
