Golden Palace

CHINA 🇨🇳

COVID-19 UPDATE: Golden Palace has a well-built outdoor dining area as well as indoor dining in accordance with NYS guidelines.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Written by Joseph Gessert, photographed by Liv Dillon.

Brooklyn’s dim sum palaces have struggled to find working business models during the pandemic, with several remaining shuttered and others transitioning to takeout with mixed success. 86th Street’s Golden Palace has the advantage of a large parking lot, in which they have built sturdy tents with heat and plywood floors. Steaming carts have been replaced by paper menus, and while you might miss the clatter of those wheels, your food will be cooked to order, meaning everything is fresh, hot, and better than ever.

Steamed rice rolls are omnipresent in the neighborhood, and a dim sum favorite is chinese donut wrapped with rice noodle roll ($4, below top left corner). Both the donuts and the rice rolls benefit from the cooked-to-order development, with the crunchy/soft contrast coming through very nicely. Another rice roll variation is leek noodle roll ($5, below), in which the noodles are rolled around pork and shrimp and turned on their sides. Both are best with a side of chili to complement the usual soy sauce.

Spare ribs with black pepper ($5) are tender, peppery, and especially good at Golden Palace, as is the stuffed bean curd skin ($6.50). As always with this dish, it’s not much to look at, but the balance of pork-shrimp-bamboo shoot and chewy bean curd skin is great here. Baked pork buns ($4) and deep fried stuffed dumplings ($4) bridge the gap from savory to sweet, with the latter especially enjoyable—minced pork is buried in deep-fried glutinous rice.

Fully on the dessert side of things are two variations on the bun filled with egg yoke theme—baked egg yoke custard bun ($3.25 for two) and steamed egg yoke custard bun ($4 for three). Both are delicious, with the difference coming down mostly to texture—the baked has a crunchier pastry with the egg yolk filling mostly dried out, whereas the steamed has a soft bao filled with runny sweetened egg yoke.

Dim sum meals are heavy on starch and sugar, and if you can muster enough diners in the current climate to justify an entree, your meal will be more balanced for it. Sizzling spare ribs with black pepper rice noodle roll ($18, below) is substantial, and might not be translated exactly right—the ribs are in a black bean and rice wine gravy.

Regardless, the sizzling platter is a textural triumph. Tightly rolled rice noodles have been pan-fried on the platter until a crust forms. Crunchy on the outside, chewy in the middle, topped off with peppers, peanuts, bean sprouts, and rib nuggets. This is a great dish. Still heavy on the starch, but you will not regret it.

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BENSONHURST Brooklyn

1619 86th Street

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