The Har Gow (蝦餃) at Hum Sung in Ottawa were pretty, and quite tasty, but otherwise not impressive. They deserved a Rating of 3 out of 5.
The Hum Sung Restaurant in Ottawa’s Chinatown is a small, very pleasant mom-and-pop sort of operation. It is not much on frills or upscale ambience but the food is generally well-prepared and tasty.
It is mostly a Dim Sum restaurant and the items I have tried there have always been enjoyable, even though the Har Gow I was served on my last visit were really best described as run-of-the-mill.
I would hazard a guess and say that Hum Sung’s version of Har Gow (蝦餃) are made on site and not commercially prepared elsewhere. They were actually fairly well folded and pleated, but not quite pretty enough to ‘play in the big-leagues’. They ran to 9 pleats (where 13 is considered expert) but didn’t really manage the pretty curved frill along the outer edge.
The dough itself was rolled fairly thin, properly steamed, and gave a nice bite, but it was slightly dried in a few spots and didn’t have a very pretty translucency. They were well filled, however (and some places can be a bit stingy), but the shrimp, though clearly fresh, was a little bland and not very exciting at all.
The one major issue I had with the 蝦餃 at Hum Sung was the fact that they had been placed in the steamer rather carelessly so that the skins were sticking together. All but one of them ripped as I tried to extricate them and that spoils the overall effect a little bit. I liked these well enough but in the great scheme of Dim Sum things they were definitely mediocre.