What a find! Last night, I happened into Ming's Bistro and discovered the restaurant is having a "seasonal promotion": a Chinese lobster dinner for $14 (well, $13.99).
I've never been to Ming's for lobster, or even for dinner. The Mills 50 District restaurant is known for dim sum, so I go on weekend mornings for tapas-style plates of dumplings and veggies and buns. But the folks from Tasty Wok have taken over so I wanted to try the new menu.
Bingo! The lobster dinner comes in any of five preparations: ginger-scallion, which you see pictured, plus salt and pepper, or with a house, spicy Thai sweet chili, or black bean sauce. The crustacean is served chopped up for easy eating, slathered in sauce, with a modest bowl of white rice.
The lobster is fresh. You can't really see it in this photograph, but the lobsters are pulled live from the tank for each order. During last night's dinner, employees visited the tank several times, gently removing one lobster with some big grabby stick each time.
We didn't order fish, but clearly that's fresh too. Check out the tank.
We also tried the orange-flavored beef. The flavor was way more intense than at American-style Chinese restaurants. And the dish was nearly all beef. It wasn't dummied down with vegetables just to save the restaurant money.
Finally, we did get one small taste of dim sum. We ordered the roast pork barbecue bun off the a la carte dim sum menu. The bread part was soft and sweet, the meat savory.
I'll be back again ... before that lobster promotion is over. That might be soon. The Facebook page says promotion will be on "through the holiday season," and that is pretty much over.
What a deal.
Eat enthusiastically,
Rona