Empress courts fans of dim sum delights

John Lehndorff, Rocky Mountain News

Friday, July 11, 2003

Once you get over the fact that you are nibbling on toes, chicken feet ($1.95) can be an enjoyable delicacy. It's a little like chewing a mouthful of very flavorful bones. Duck feet ($1.95) are another thing entirely.

I encountered both items recently at one of Denver's premier dim sum palaces, Empress Seafood Restaurant at the crossroads of the Asian business community, West Alameda Avenue and Federal Boulevard.

Dim sum translates literally as ''dot-hearts,'' meaning small taste treats that touch the heart.

At restaurants, dim sum is a wonderful brunch extravaganza involving metal carts racing from table to crowded table offering dozens of items from soup to desserts. The Empress offers that experience on Saturday and Sunday and a dim sum menu all day every day. A numbered photo menu sheet is provided to give you a vague idea what the individual items looks like.

I'll admit I chickened out at my first meal at the eatery and ordered all the easy-to-love steamed, baked or fried buns, pastries, dumplings and tarts. They usually come in multiple units making them easy to share at one of these one-course, all-appetizer meals.

If you are a dim sum rookie, start with the Empress' most accessible dishes. For instance, roast pork croissants ($1.95/2 pieces) are as yummy as they sound. The classic flaky puff pastry bites are filled with slightly sweet chopped pork.

Delightful baked barbecue pork buns ($1.95/3) are brown outside and white bread inside with a center of seasoned pork. Steamed barbecue pork buns ($1.95/3) offer the same slightly sweet filling inside soft, white bread that looks doughy but isn't. Also memorable are the steamed chicken buns ($1.95 for three) wrapped around fragrant, gingery dark meat.

The nice thing about dim sum is that if one item isn't to your liking, you're only out a couple of bucks. That allows you to stretch a little and try the intriguing vegetable bean curd roll, ($1.95/2) which wraps savory noodles and slivered veggies in a thin fried tofu ''skin.'' The deep-fried taro turnovers ($1.95/2) were also a big hit at our table, a melt-on-the-tongue puff of crispiness.

Seafood fans will love the steamed shrimp dumplings ($1.95/4), which feature slightly chewy shrimp meat inside a see-through rice noodle covering. Ditto for the scallop dumplings ($1.95/3).

The dim sum menu includes some wonderful rice and noodle dishes. One is a sort of Chinese tamale, sweet sticky rice ($2.95), steamed in a wrapping of lotus leaf with a middle of dark chicken meat, mushrooms and water chestnut.

Pasta preparations range from beef with flat rice noodle ($7.50), al dente wide noodles with pieces of tender pounded beef, to the addictive Singapore thin noodles ($7.50) tossed in a five-spice sauce with shrimp, pork, and bell pepper.

Dim sum involves few hot, spicy items. Many are mildly seasoned and even slightly sweet. Meat items that need condiments for a little oomph include the steamed pork dumpling ($1.95/4), shrimp-paste stuffed green pepper ($1.95/2) and steamed quail egg pork dumpling ($1.95).

Despite my big tent philosophy of dining - if you serve it I will eat it - there were some dishes that just didn't ring my chimes. This brings us back to the little bowl of chicken feet ($1.95). This is a dish for bone-suckers, people who don't mind pulling the leftover cartilaginous fragments from their mouths.

I've also decided I'm not web-friendly after downloading some duck feet ($1.95) in five spice sauce. There's more meat than on the chicken equivalent, but I didn't like chewing on the web part.

One dish I won't order again was the snails in black bean sauce ($5.95) because it was such a frustrating struggle to dig the critters out with toothpicks.

The ''spare ribs'' ($1.95) were a small bowl of very chewy bites of pork rib that were earthy and positively delicious. On another visit I was expecting spare ribs but when they arrived I knew something wasn't quite right. It turned out I had checked the item above the spare ribs, omasun with bean sauce ($1.95). The little bowl was filled with chewy, spicy honeycomb tripe.

If you love cooked greens, reward yourself with the glowing jade Chinese greens ($6.95) piled high on a platter and splashed with sweet soy.

The only dish from Empress' regular menu we sampled was the exceptionally addictive lobster with scallion and ginger ($15.95). A whole lobster is cleavered into pieces and then wok-fried until the herbs, spices and oil form a finger-lickin' coating.

Last but actually first in my heart are the scrumptious sesame seed dumplings ($1.95/3). These deep-fried sesame seed-coated dough balls with a sweet bean paste inside are served warm and amazingly oil-free. They're the best I've ever sampled.

Service at the Empress is a mixed bag. On weekdays, it is fast and attentive. Weekend mornings it can be frenzied, and the noise exacerbates the language problems. The best advice is to get everything you want from each cart - just point - when it's at your table, because it may be a long time before you see it again.

The last time we visited the Empress, a busload of 50 or so Lions Club members from Taiwan filled six tables in the expansive dining room. We asked one gentleman how he liked the food.

''Very good. Not quite the same as Taiwan, but very good,'' he said.

We couldn't agree more.