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Walking around its compact blocks today, you’ll hear lots of languages - Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, to name a few - and that variety is reflected in the range of cuisines that the neighborhood’s restaurants and markets serve. “The ID,” as locals call it, is the historic heart of Seattle’s Asian American experience, located just south of downtown and the Yesler Terrace neighborhood. Chinese settlers arrived on the waterfront, and as the frontier town grew, moved inland to the neighborhood now known as the International District. But that’s the thing about the best: they’re always compelling, should always be celebrated, and Dim Sum & Duck is undoubtedly the best all-round Cantonese you can eat in London.Asian people have been a part of Seattle since the Pacific coast city was founded in the 1850s.
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So to shout about something that’s already echoing can seem… uncompelling. Marks are constantly hit and marks are constantly missed. You have PR companies, influencers, bloggers, restaurant recommendation websites, friends, family, and yadda yadda yadda. Of course, restaurant attention is uneven in London. Oh, you know the one? You’re better off going midweek in the daytime? Yeah, we’ve heard that as well. That because the masses know about a poky little 20-odd seater Cantonese restaurant in King’s Cross, the one serving impeccable handmade dim sum, eye-wateringly pungent garlic-fried morning glory, and roasted duck that’s sometimes as moist and melt-in-your-mouth as any bird you’ve eaten (and other times not nearly that level), that it’s probably not worth going on about anymore. It’s an NME-era hangup about the coolest band and the best (see, rarest) unreleased, barely-listenable demo track found on Carl Barât’s early noughties MiniDisk player. This appreciation quota is a bit of a teenage hangover that everyone, once in a while, suffers from. Get in the way of an angry Scouser’s dinner at your peril. That now your mum, her neighbour and the fella at the barbers knows about their glistening £9 mountains of soft and savoury beef ho fun, that a restaurant’s quota for appreciation has been filled. The problem is that there’s a school of thought that once a restaurant, even one as modest and consistent as Dim Sum & Duck, has reached this echelon of hype, that praise is somehow less worthwhile. Enormous chunks of prawn the size of a baby’s fist bobbing about in a salty pork broth. The wontons in soup were pretty good too. Incidentally, that night, the crispy chilli beef was a lurid-tasting masterclass. And it’s part and parcel of recommending restaurants. The last time we ate at Dim Sum & Duck it was a Tuesday night, there was a hungry queue of people snaking down the pavement and a mildly flustered Liverpudlian desperately trying to book one of their ten or so tables inside for a week in advance because “their phone always rings out”. We devoured it, we went across the road to the offy for more drinks, and then we ordered more.
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Rich and delicate xiaolongbao, slippery cheung fun, artful prawn and chive dumplings. Outside dining was the only option in May 2021 and so too was BYOB from across the road.
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The sun was setting tangerine and lilac down King’s Cross Road, James Turrell-ing all three empty tables outside the Cantonese restaurant. The first time we ate at Dim Sum & Duck it was a Wednesday evening.