Seafood Cove 2

Stop us if this makes us sound old: Believe it or not, there was a time when Chinese small plates – dim sum – cost around $3 each and spectacular. Entire meals could be built around eating as many dim sum as you could handle, picked one by one from roving carts full of steamed, baked, and fried delicacies, or you could mix the small plates with larger entrees (commonly barbecued pork, roasted duck, or seafood noodles) for an even more amazing experience. Sounds great, right?

Apart from the pricing, that experience still exists at Westminster’s Seafood Cove 2, which was the area’s omega-class dim sum restaurant prior to the pandemic, and has largely returned to form in subsequent years. Seafood Cove 2 has all the small plates you’d find anywhere else – crystalline shrimp har gow, pork shumai dumplings, steamed pork buns, ginger tripe, and mini rib bites – but also has a bunch that will likely be either new or semi-novel to all but the biggest dim sum fans.

“Maybe novelties” include rice paper wrapped around your choice of Chinese donuts, BBQ beef, shrimp, or pork, served here either with hoisin sauce on the side, or drenched in lightly vinegared soy sauce. Sauces aside, they’re analogous to Vietnamese Banh Cuon rolls and sometimes sold under the same name in supermarkets. Actual novelties include Nutella sesame balls, beef tendon, black mushroom shumai, braised honeycomb tripe with pork blood, and fried seaweed rolls. Semi-common items range from deep fried shrimp balls and dumplings, to Chinese sausage buns, baked BBQ pork buns, and baked pineapple buns. A handful of the dim sum are only available starting at 11:00am.