San Francisco: Dragon Beaux

If there's one thing I missed the most during the pandemic, it's dim sum.  Now that we're all fully vaccinated, we're a bit braver about dining in, which is really the best way to have dim sum.

For our SF day, we went all out and headed to Dragon Beaux:

The place was packed, both outside and in.  We had a reservation for a party of ten, but even then we had to wait a bit.

We didn't mind.  We perused the menu while we were waiting.  Once seated, we immediately placed our order.  There were no dim sum carts at Dragon Beaux, just a paper menu which we marked up and turned in.

The food came pretty quickly.  There were black bean sauce chicken feet ($6.45):

Jumbo scallop shiu mai ($8.45):

Abalone and chicken sticky rice in lotus leaf ($8.45):

Fish maw mountain yam congee ($12) for the congee lovers (AG and UK):

Shrimp rice crepe rolls ($8.45):

Black bean sauce spareribs ($5.45):

Crab roe shiu mai ($6.45):

Sea bass dumplings ($8.45):

Crab roe xiao long bao ($10.25):

Before you freak out, there were more than four in an order.  People were hungry and I couldn't take photos fast enough.

XO spinach dumplings ($8.45):

Daikon cake ($7.45):

And then for dessert, we got steamed egg yolk lava bao ($6.45):

Gotta check out the lava center:

And of course, durian puffs ($10.88):

Not everyone likes durian, but I sure do:

Let's just get this out of the way, shall we?  Dragon Beaux is expensive.  There's no way around that.  They also have less variety when it comes to dim sum.  (Maybe because of the pandemic?)  No fried taro puffs.  No pan fried chive dumplings.  No xian shui jiao (fried dumplings).  

What Dragon Beaux does have, however, is a luxurious take on regular dim sum.  Shiu mai?  Put a scallop on it.  Steamed dumpling?  Add some sea bass.  And crab roe in everything!  

And it's actually good.  It's not all about aesthetics and fancy ingredients.  

Dragon Beaux is more a splurge for a nice occasion kind of place.  Or a treat your Asian parents to something nice kind of place.  I definitely wouldn't be able to afford going there for my regular dim sum fix, but once in a while, it's nice to feel pampered.

Apparently Dragon Beaux also does hot pot.  I definitely won't be going back for that.

Dragon Beaux

5700 Geary Blvd

San Francisco, CA 94121

(415) 333-8899

https://dragonbeaux.com/