Two things:
1. There is bad Chinese food in San Francisco.
2. This series is not going to be a Best Of series. Rather, it's about what normal people eat every day.
I had no plans on ticking another country off the list today. But I was early for a 1:30 appointment and the cafeteria at my destination is boring as heck. So I chose a cheap Chinese restaurant across the street instead.
Dim sum is a Southern Chinese phenomenon. On weekends, I generally do dim sum more often than the traditional Eggs Benedict brunch. The restaurant I went to today has a big steam table. Customers order rice and one to three items from the spread. There's also a dim sum option, which is atypical.
I saw turnip cake on the menu board and ordered it. It's my favorite dim sum dish. "No more!" Okay, something else then. I ended up ordering har gow (shrimp dumpling), shumai (pork dumpling), and pot stickers. They were all mediocre at best. Don't tell my wife, but the pork in the shumai was pink-ish, i.e. not fully cooked. Fortunately, I have a titanium stomach.
The good thing is that I was in and out within 15 minutes. That's about the only good thing. This is what normal worker drones like you and me eat for lunch when we are short on time and cash. Glamorous it is not.
Countries tried so far:
Asia: China, Philippines
North America: USA