This weekend we ventured out to Beaverton to Jin Wah for a dim sum breakfast. Jin Wah is on the Beaverton/Hillsdale highway, just west of 217, in that maze of strip malls. It is right across the street (north) from the Fred Meyer. Next door is Marinepolis, the conveyor belt sushi place.

Jin Wah bills itself as a Vietnamese restaurant, and if you check out their menu it features standard Viet fare (soups, bun, etc.) with Chinese offerings as well. On weekends they do a pretty standard fare dim sum. While on the whole, their dim sum is not as good as Wong’s King in SE Portland, it is much more accessible. On a Sunday morning at 10:30 AM, for instance, you’ll be hard pressed to find a seat at Wong’s without a substantial wait. This morning we were seated immediately in Jin Wah’s large dining room.

Also, Wong’s is so packed that you’ll have difficulty connecting with the various dim sum carts as they make their way through the dining room. High-demand items might be snatched away before the cart even makes it to your table — it took almost an hour last time I was there to secure a squid order. Not so at Jin Wah — the carts and waitresses pushing them are prolific enough that you don’t feel left out.

Here’s what I sampled:

• Shrimp har gow. These were good. The shrimp were fairly innocuous, but fresh tasting.
• Shrimp/vegatable dumplings with chives and dried shrimp. These had a slightly interesting taste, but were just ok.
• Chicken feet braised in anised broth. Bland. Better at Wong’s King, which does theirs with a flavorful black bean sauce.
• Massive shrimp meatballs coated in rice flour and rolled in chow fun noodles, and then fried. The waitress snipped these in half before serving with a thick sweet and sour sauce. The shrimp meat tasted "off" and these were not very good. I’m not sure if this replaces the sugar cane shrimp I had last time I was here, as this time these were noticeably absent. If so, that would be a shame - the sugar cane shrimp featured fried, battered shrimp meatballs and were quite good.
• Stuffed been curd sheets, stuffed with wood ear mushrooms, ground pork and shrimp. These were really good, very tender and full of flavor.
• Salt and pepper squid. Nice size portion of freshly battered (rice flour) and fried squid chunks, including tentacle ends. The squid is dusted with finely ground salt and pepper, and tossed with stir fried garlic, onions (green and yellow), and jalapeno rings. This was excellent (my favorite) and is a better preparation than what Wong’s King serves.
• Steamed chinese broccoli. A large portion of perfectly steamed greens and stems, mounded on a platter and doused with a few squirts of oyster sauce.

Total price came to $33 for two people.