Palacio Lung Fung

Palacio Lung Fung
Via Simón Bolívar and Calle 62 C. Oeste
Panama City, Panama

It is said that you can find Chinese people in almost everywhere in the world. In the case of Panama, it is said that Chinese born and/or first generation accounts for at least 5 percent (150,000 of over 3,000,000) of the Panamanian population. However, Chinese people have been in Panama goes way back to the time of the Panama Canal construction (if not further back) and have intermingled with the local population. A lot of times you will find people with a Chinese surname, yet, physically, they look like any other Panamanian born. Regardless, Chinese people has made its mark in the Panamanian culture. For example, the neighbourhood grocery store, it is usually referred to as the “Chinito de la esquina” – literally, “The Chinese of the corner”. (However, this is not unique to Panama, other countries in Latin America will also use the Chinese for this expression).

And, of course, food. It is said that wherever you can find Chinese people, you will find Chinese restaurants. In this case, I took my parents for dim sum to one of the best known Chinese restaurants in the city: Palacio Lung Fung.

Way back then, this place used to be the main location for Chinese events: Meetings, wedding receptions, banquets, et al, they all usually took place here. They could do it because this place is big: Not really noticeable in the picture above but this restaurant is a three storey building, with parkade in the ground floor (with a small lunch room/take out outlet), the regular restaurant in the second level and the main banquet hall in the third level. For dim sum, specially if they know in advance it will be busy, they will open all floors for business.

Please, don’t ask, it is just there…

Despite the size of the restaurant, there were a lot of people queued, waiting for tables. We were able to jump ahead because the parties ahead of us where too large for a table that just opened. Feel free to call it luck… (On that note, our party was made up of my parents, my sister, a friend – who was a bit late – and myself). And here is one of the most important topics of discussion for dim sum places: carts or slips/forms? There are pros and cons of each: in the case of the carts, there is no guessing game (this is specially true for people who do not speak Chinese); however, it creates the problem of “freshness” of the items, as they might been sitting there for a while. This can be address if they are cooked to order, something done if slips/forms are used. (Of course, it won’t be a problem at all if the turnaround is really fast). But, then, for those who do not read Chinese and even if they are in English (or Spanish in the case of Panama), things might be lost in translation… Anyway, Lung Fung uses carts.

Not sure if it is really noticeable from the picture above but there were a lot of non-Chinese people in this dining room!

It is fortunate that people here are more “civilized” when it comes to getting the food from the carts. At least, they will wait until the cart arrives, not like some places I have observed where people might go even to the kitchen to procure the goodies! And, on the topic of goodies, here are some of the items we ordered:

Siu mai or pork and mushroom dumpling. For people here in Canada (or, should I say, outside of Panama…), notice fish roe is not added on top.

Haa gao (or whichever spelling you prefer) or shrimp dumplings. If you call it small, I won’t blame you…

Tripe. The slices at the top are slices of ginger. They were not as tender as I wished they were.

Fish balls. I think we ordered this by mistake, thinking they were beef balls. Oh, well… Still, they were not as good as they could have been.

Cheong fun or rice noodle rolls. For some odd reason, my family usually does not share this dish, so everybody got one (the pork version seen above). We also ordered an additional one of shrimp, though.

Pork steamed buns. I did not have any; rather, my friend finished them all (though gravity “helped”…)

Egg tarts. Not much to say…

Another bun, this one had a coconut filling. The order has two pieces; however, my sister nabbed one before I could take a picture of it.

While we had more dishes (like the infamous phoenix talons, aka, chicken feet), reality was, I did not really want to take more pictures. This is really unlike me but there was one reason: I was NOT enjoying the food. While conversation with my family and friend helped, the food was not doing so. Either, the quality was not there or I have been used to the dim sum offered here in Vancouver (unlikely, you will find out why in Sunday’s post) or it was a bad day (again, unlikely because it was a busy day). I have other thoughts but won’t elaborate. In the end, it seems Lung Fung rested in their laurels and let the food slip. Total of the meal (close to 20 dishes, if not a couple more) was just under US $50. Sure, it was cheap but it was not worth it…

Tagged under: Chinese • Dim Sum • Panama City