Harbor City Restaurant: little hearts without the romance.
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When you walk through the door at Harbor City in Seattle’s International District you immediately sense its authenticity. One large room with 1980’s striped and flowered wallpaper and an occasional Chinese paper lantern defines this place as something that needs no renovation because it serves its purpose perfectly well. Tables are set far apart, giving ample room for pushcarts of dim sum and for people crowding around those carts to get the most popular items before they’re gone. There is little else in the austere rectangular space because it isn’t needed. Anything else would just be in the way.
The place is constantly noisy. In the window by the front door hangs ducks, chickens, roasted and BBQ’d pork, and next to it the cutting counter where a guy chops the meat with vigor. Unlike the white noise of a well-honed cleaver thudding softly on a century-old butcher block, the noise of the chopping here is more reminiscent of a construction crew building walls inside your house. This is supplemented by the occasional chaotic crashing of dishes coming from the back of the house. Though I didn’t check my own tableware for chips and cracks, I pictured the dishwasher — having just learned that tips didn’t reach the slop sink workers — deciding to dump the dishes in a protest pile on the floor in front of the pass.
There is an impressive array of items on the menu which fall into the category of typical and not-so-typical Cantonese, Sichuan and Hunan dishes. But the main draw at Harbor City is dim sum. Often touted as one of Seattle’s favorite joints for these little hearts, it’s hard today to fully realize the excitement that so many speak of, since COVID has halted the pushcart process in Seattle, forcing customers to instead order from the online menu on their smartphones. So while the food may be great, the romance is sadly missing from the dim sum experience. Sure, there are pictures of each dim sum item, but nothing beats looking at the real thing in its little round steamer and simply pointing to it. I miss with every finger point the scrawl marks made on the green order slip — illegible to the common eye — and the miracle that, no matter how many people sit around your dim sum table nor how much is ordered, the bill always comes to about $15 per person. Used to be more like $10 but, hey, inflation.
And that price is well worth it. Ordering some of my “litmus test” dim sum items to judgmentally determine the quality of the place, Harbor City did not disappoint. The waiter set a tray unusually heavy with small plates and steamers before me without so much as a raised eyebrow. He gave no acknowledgement that what was on that tray was impossibly excessive for one person to consume alone. Seems gluttonous dim sum dining is no big deal at Harbor city. Besides, I had a reason because, y’know, Foodwalkers…
The Steamed Spareribs with Black Bean Sauce — one of my go-to dim sum delicacies — were moist and meaty; little bites of tender pork with a black bean or two clinging to it, dripping with unctuous broth. It passed my subjective test with flying colors. Impressed that the cook took time to clip off the claws, I decided that the Chicken Feet were some of the best I’ve had this side of Singapore. Hours of slow braising and steaming helped the rich liquid penetrate the feet, rendering the pads thick with soft collagen and skin which slipped off easily. Picking the bones out as you eat is a joy, and I don’t understand why this dish is not more popular with Western diners. They don’t blink at a bowl of oxtail soup, and they’ll arm wrestle over the “Pope’s Nose” of a rotisserie roaster. But toss a perfectly cooked chicken foot in front of them and they get all squirmish. Just more for the rest of us, I guess, so who am I to judge.
It seemed clear to me that each of the many dim sum items I had were prepared by the skilled hands of people who care about their food. I sensed no shortcuts taken, no detail spared in creating this food — from the careful folds in the dumplings to the balanced flavors and delicateness of stuffed skins. And everything came out of the kitchen hot — a problem often encountered with pushcarts roaming the floor a little too long. Still, call me old school, but I long to once again gaze at a row of pushcarts filled with plates, bamboo steamers and silver pots splashing with liquids. There is something about seeing food rolling past and grabbing what, at that moment, you really want. Then doing it all over again, and again, and again. With a pot of tea, good conversation and a continuous flow of food carts, I can do dim sum all day long. And I’ll soon return to Harbor City to do just that.
Harbor City Restaurant, 707 S. King St., Seattle, WA
