My parents wanted to go for dim sum last Sunday, but my mom forgot to make reservations the night before. And if you go to dim sum often, you know that dim sum restaurants are packed on Sundays. So we gave some calls to a few restaurants, but they all said the earliest would be 1pm, which meant I would be rushed to get to work. My mom ended up calling Good Eat, and they said we could get seats. I later realized that I had gone to Good Eat with a couple of friends a few years back. I remember the food was ridiculously cheap, but I didn’t exactly remember how the quality of food was. I was skeptical, since the outside of the restaurant is definitely not as classy as some of the other dim sum restaurants in Richmond. But I guess I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Anyways, parking is terrible here. You can basically park in front of other cars because the lot is so small. The manager would then call your license plate when a customer needs you to move your car so they can get out.
Seafood Fried Rice
We started with the Steamed Fried Rice. I think it was $7.99, which is a pretty good deal. The rice came in an unattractive and not very presentable way on the dish, and I got skeptical about the food. Surprisingly, it wasn’t too bad! There was lots of shrimp and scallops, and was actually pretty flavourful. Not bad!
Steamed Chicken Feet
And then we got the infamous $2.50 dim sum. Yes! Most of the dim sum here is only $2.50-$2.95. What a deal! Most dim sum restaurants charge you around $4 a dish. So then again, I was a little worried about the food. How can dim sum be so cheap?! But again, the Steamed Chicken Feet were surprisingly flavourful and not bad at all. The only issue I had with it, was that I think it was overcooked. It sort of broke off when I picked it up with my chopsticks, which doesn’t normally happen.
Sticky Rice Wrapped w/ Bamboo Leaf
My favourite dim sum is the Sticky Rice Wrapped with Bamboo Leaf. To be honest, I’m not a big fan of dim sum in general, but this is one of the few items I enjoy. It’s simple and filling, but the ingredients inside and slight bamboo aroma is what makes it delicious. These usually come three in an order, but of course, since they are only charging $2.50, they came with only two. They were still quite large in size and had lots of filling. Good!
Deep Fried Tofu
My mom wanted to get the Deep Fried Tofu. The tofu inside was really soft, and the sauce was tasty. I didn’t find it too special though. It was just average.
Steamed Rice Rolls with Dried Shrimp
Lastly, we got the Steamed Rice Rolls with Dried Shrimp. The steamed rice rolls were extremely smooth and soft. This is key to good steamed rice rolls. However, the dried shrimp were what annoyed me. I had multiple shrimps with either some sort of hard shell still on it, or just something that was hard inside my steamed rice rolls! It almost felt like it was sand or bits of rock… It was pretty annoying and distracted me from the great texture that it had!
Overall, I have to say I was pretty impressed by Good Eat. The food is actually decent, and for the price, it is definitely a great value! I’ve had much worse dim sum before at a much higher price. I think the only reason the place isn’t packed is because of the poor parking area. For a starter, I wouldn’t come here on my own, since I would have a headache trying to park. I guess cheap dim sum comes with other costs!