Before leaving San Francisco I was lucky enough to have another full day with Oren and his friend Justin. Justin is from N. Carolina, living away from home for the first time and has a palate that is primarily used to soul food. Having exposed him to Vietnamese food with great success, time for initiation to another one of our favorites: authentic dim sum. Ben introduced all of us a long time ago to dim sum, and over the years we have had many fabulous family meals in Chinatown in Chicago and a variety of Chinatowns in the US (and in Peru when we were there on Christmas day. )
The three of us walk from the 
hotel, a few blocks into SF’s Chinatown. First stop, tea sampling with the mafia of Chinese tea – an extended family that controls the tea business. Everything from lychee tea, to milk oolong (the tea plant is ‘watered’ with milk to impart a strong milk flavor.) Jars upon jars of leaves, plants and flowers to select from. We sit at the counter and sample some varieties. We get a recommendation for a good dim sum place from the woman in the tea shop, and start to walk past the throngs of tourist shops to the more authentic part of Chinatown where there are no tourists. This is getting good…
