Let's see . . . What I have for you?"
Peter Mumford
Just try to say no to these dumpling hustlers.
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Macky's Dim Sum 317 N.W. Gilman Blvd., Issaquah, 425-391-7200. 11 a.m.–9:30 p.m. Mon.–Fri., 9:30 a.m.–9:30 p.m. Sat.–Sun.
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I sat up straighter in my seat in the front dining room of Macky's Dim Sum and looked over the top of the stacked bamboo steamer baskets in the cart being manhandled by the smiling Chinese lady.
"Shu mai?"
"Yes."
"Shrimp ball?"
"Yes."
"Dumpling?"
"What kind of dumpling?"
"Very good dumpling."
"OK, then. Yes."
"Sticky rice?"
"Yes."
"Hum bow? It's pork bun."
"Um..." Thirty seconds in and my table was already getting full, spread with more food than any one reasonable person ought to eat for breakfast. I was so hungry, and the smell of it was driving me crazy.
"It's good..." the cart lady said, a wheedling tone in her voice. "I know because I already eat one off your plate."
"Off my plate?"
And she laughed—eyes crinkling and her face splitting in a huge grin. "No...I'm joking. The cook made me one. Extra one. Very, very good."
"OK, then. But that's it."
"No more?"
"No more."
"For now," she said. I was already eating—transferring dumplings and buns and sweet, sticky rice with mushrooms and bits of unidentifiable meat to the woefully small plate set before me. And the waitress just grinned and said, "I'll be back."
I wish all food was served dim sum style—tacos and burritos walked around taqueria dining rooms in baskets by smiling waitresses wearing tequila bottles in quick-draw holsters like gunfighters; duck a l'orange and bowls of cassoulet presented on rolling salvers in fine French dining rooms. I wish some enterprising young chef would do conveyor-belt tapas, or that some older chef—looking for a way to cash in on the all-things-retro trend and remembering not just the foods but the service styles of bygone eras—would open a nouveau automat-style cafeteria with hot cheeseburgers, fresh salads, steaming tamales, and cold charcuterie plates behind glass, each in their own little box with the tiny door you open to pull out whatever you want to eat.
There's something about menus (all but the most poetic, anyway) that leaves me cold. They stand as a barrier between the kitchen and the hungry folks on the floor, putting the eater at one remove from the food he so desperately wants to consume. A menu is limiting, lacks surprises, looks too much like a rule book: You may eat this or this or this, but not anything else under the sun.
But dim sum? The food is right there, and each time the server whips the top off another steamer basket, she's like a small magician, shouting Voila! and showing me one more amazing thing.
One more amazing thing that I—a man who really just ought to have POOR IMPULSE CONTROL tattooed across his forehead as a come-on to every bartender, huckster, street-corner drug dealer, and dim sum waitress with something they want me to put in my mouth—will just have to eat. I have a legendarily bad track record at dim sum restaurants, a reputation for ordering, well, everything.
The shrimp balls at Macky's were lovely—small, pink, and perfectly steamed, fresh from the kitchen to the carts. The pork buns were almost the size of baseballs, served three to an order, golden-brown, topped with a glaze of shining honey and stuffed with chopped, barbecued pork. The "very good dumplings" simply were. I still can't tell you what was in them.
But the shu mai at Macky's were fat and round and made of pork with no shrimp, which I found a little strange. Missing that ethereal balance that the meat of the best crustacean can bring to the meat of God's favorite mammal, I found them lacking. And I wasn't the only one: Two tables ahead of me, a woman was asking Sonny Wong (the owner, along with his wife, Macky) about the shu mai.
"Pork only," he said to her. "Yes. But you like pork and shrimp dumplings? Next time, call me. I'll make them for you."
It's a line I've heard a lot, from many different restaurateurs. But Sonny's a little different. He went to the counter, pulled a business card from the stack by the register, and gave it to the woman, insisting again that she just call him a half-hour before she planned to come in, and he'd have proper shrimp-and-pork shu mai waiting for her. "Or anything else you like," he insisted.
Seriously, anything. During my hour-long breakfast, I watched Sonny do the same for other tables, offering a special duck preparation to one, off-menu Chinese vegetables to another. "Just call," he'd say. Ask and ye shall receive. "When are you planning to come back?" he'd add, as though a second meal was already a foregone conclusion.
Macky and Sonny opened Macky's just a few months ago in this tucked-away pocket of Gilman Village in Issaquah—the place they fell back to after 20 years spent running Seattle's temple of dim sum and karaoke, China Gate, in the International District (which they sold in 2008 and which just closed, under the watch of the new owners, at the beginning of March).
