For the dumpling connaisseur, Ming Tsai's Dim Sum and Disco party is the highlight of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. I can now tell you that dim sum this good makes it well worth putting up with disco music. OK, so maybe I even shimmied a little. But I mostly ate, as these photos will attest.
1 Guests packed the counters at the Setai, watching as the chefs prepared their dim sum and gobbling the small bites as fast as they were plated.
2 Host Chef Ming Tsai served his signature foie gras shui mai.
3 That's black truffle atop a foie gras dumpling. Chef Ming went big.
4 Small pipettes of soy sauce were served alongside some of the dumplings. It looked cool, but when people started dropping them on the floor...there were a few ruined shoes.
5 This is a shrimp-taro pancake. The fact that this fried goodness was the LEAST decadent thing I ate at this party is telling.
6 Here are Chef Joanthan Wright's steamed buns stuffed with veal cheek and foie gras.
7 It took a lot of chefs to keep up with all the steaming baskets and frying pans.
8 This is a fried dumpling filled with uni, a.k.a. sea urchin, and topped with caviar. It sure beat theordinary shrimp-and-pork variety.
9 Don't like raw fish? Just blast your sushi with a blowtorch. What do you mean you don't have a blowtorch?
10 Chef Susur Lee served delicious lobster-corn and lamb-rice dumplings that also happened to be pretty cute.
Here's a bonus: A peek at the lot of our celebrity chef host. He's cooking, he's serving, he's getting his photo taken, he's getting videotaped...and only one minute has elapsed! It's harder than it looks on TV, right?
