Alameda’s Pacific Lighthouse for Dim Sum
This is my first post for 2017 and I thought I would share the New Year’s resolutions I made for myself. The first one is to purge and organize. The second one is to try some new sports for exercise. And my third New Year’s resolution is to eat more dim sum. I took my grandma out of Assisted Living on New Year’s Eve to “Yum Cha,” or “Drink Tea,” aka eat dim sum, and she was happy about it.
It was my first visit to the new upscale Chinese restaurant in Alameda called Pacific Lighthouse to have dim sum. The Yelp reviews haven’t been too favorable, but I wanted to give it a fair assessment. It’s not unusual to have a wait for dim sum and not wanting my 99 year old grandma to wait, we arrived before the noon rush.
Pacific Lighthouse is located by the marina with great harbor views if you are lucky to get a window seat. We had a table in the center of the restaurant under the golden chandelier. We ordered many of the basic dim sum items such as these:
Pork dumpling
Shrimp dumpling
Daikon cake
Shrimp rice roll
Steamed chicken feet
Steamed pork buns
In general, these dim sum items should taste the same whether you get them from one restaurant or another. I base the quality by the freshness of ingredients, the temperature which tells me if it just came out of the steamer or if it’s been sitting in a cart for awhile, and cooking time which can affect the texture. Their homemade hot sauce was also on point.
We also tried some additional dim sum that I don’t always get to order or eat. We picked up some delicious steamed black bean pork spareribs over rice noodles. The overflowing sauce made it quite easy to slurp down the noodles. I also liked that it came with taro pieces and black olives.
This was my first time trying the daikon pastry. It’s similar to eating steamed daikon but this is wrapped in a warm pastry shell. I liked the crispy outer shell and having a savory soft filling inside.
Pacific Lighthouse serves a sweet custard bun which I haven’t had since I was in Canada. This one oozes a melting custard. The version here when opened looked oily, but it was quite delicious. You can watch my video on Instagram at @510foodie.
I enjoyed my visit to Pacific Lighthouse and would definitely make a return trip. It’s nice to have another East Bay restaurant serving dim sum to add to the repertoire.
