2. Happy Garden and SF Supermarket

Our next Great Adventure involved a trip down to South Sacramento on the 99 to the Fruitridge exit to partake in the tastiness that is dim sum.

South Sacramento has a large number of Asian groceries, restaurants, and other assorted retailers. I discovered the awesomeness that is South Sac in May of 2007, and I've been hooked ever since.

My favorite thing to do is DIM SUM. This is probably the most wonderful way to eat Chinese food. Dim sum as defined by Wikipedia:

"Dim sum (literally meaning "touch the heart") is the name for a Chinese cuisine which involves a wide range of light dishes served alongside Chinese tea. It is usually served in the mornings until noon time at Chinese restaurants and at specialty dim sum eateries where typical dishes are available throughout the day. Dishes come in small portions and may include meat, seafood, and vegetables, as well as desserts and fruit. The items are usually served in a small steamer basket or on a small plate."

That innocuous little description in no way belies the delight that will await you when you reach Happy Garden.

Happy Garden is the restaurant I've gone to the most for Dim Sum in the Sacramento Area. I hear that New Canton on Broadway has a FABULOUS weekend Dim sum service (rumored to be 60+ dishes!), but I also hear that they have a very long wait, which is not in the cards with Kidlets 1, 2, & 3. So we go to Happy Garden, which is just south of Fruitridge on Stockton Blvd. Take the 99 south of Sac and take the Fruitridge exit.

Here is a picture of the front of Happy Garden:


So now let's get down to the good part. Dim sum comes around in little carts. It's all either deepfried and served on little plates, or steamed and served in little baskets. You get a little card at your table, and whenever you pick a dish from the carts, the server punches a spot on your card for either small, medium, or large. You pay by the plate, usually between $2-5 per plate, depending on the item.

Our standbys include shrimp noodles (large rice flour noodles filled with shrimp and served in a salty-sweet sauce), pork shu mai (pork dumplings), char sui bao, either steamed or baked (bbq pork filled buns, either steamed or baked), shrimp dumpings, egg tarts (a dessert item), shrimp balls (shrimp paste wrapped in wonton wrappers and deep fried, served with sweet and sour sauce), green onion dumpings (green onion and shrimp wrapped in rice paper and steamed and pan-fried, dip in soy sauce). There may be more that I am forgetting. To date, I have not tried chicken feet. Some day.

So here is Adventure Dad and Kidlets 1, 2, and 3. They have just been seated and they grabbed the first plate of shrimp noodles they saw. You can see the pink card on the table...that is our bill. By the time we are done, it will be covered in little stamps to indicate how many dishes we picked out and how much moola we owe.

Okay, you caught me. The kidlets are wearing the same outfits they wore to the farmer's market. We did indeed do TWO adventures in one day. So sue me. All moms know that if you can actually get three kids and two adults out of bed, showered, dressed, and packed in the car by 9:30 you're going to cram as much into that day as possible.


So here is a cart of dim sum being pushed around. This cart has from top to bottom, left to right: shrimp balls, sesame balls (filled with sweet red bean paste), green onion dumplings (the ones on the second level, far left), unidentified green dumplings which I have never tried, taro balls (taro wrapped in shredded wonton wrapper and fried), and egg custard bao. Tasty, tasty.

Down at the bottom you can see the takeout boxes. I highly recommend getting extra dim sum to take home. It makes a great pre-dinner snack.

Here is Kidlet 3 posing with my takeout box for later. In this box you can see egg custard tart, green onion dumpling, shrimp dumpling, pork shu mai, and baked and steamed char sui bao. At approximately 4:30 I warmed all this, made a pot of tea, and devoured it in about 4 minutes.

Mommy loves some dim sum.

You can experience the dim sum for yourself at Happy Garden on Stockton Blvd. We spent $39 for the five of us and leftovers for us as well as my grandparents. For quality Chinese food, that's pretty cheap.

So now that we are all stuffed full of dim sum and waddling, it's time for Great Adventure Part Deux. Time to hit up the SF Supermarket. SF Supermarket is at the intersection of 65th street and Stockton Blvd. It's just about 1.5 miles south of Happy Garden on Stockton Blvd. The shopping center has a couple of Pho restaurants (Vietnamese noodle soup...tasty stuff), some authentic Chinese herbal stores, a couple of little import stores specializing in trinkets, a jewelry store, two great florists that sell very healthy orchids for a great price, and the SF Supermarket.

Here's a tip: park behind the shopping center and walk through the breezeway. Parking here is usually a disaster, so save yourself the headache. Here's a picture of the back parking lot.

The breezeway is under the red arch in the center of the picture. It comes out right between the Pho restaurant and the florist.

Turn to your left to go down and few storefronts to the SF Supermarket.

Now, just a disclaimer: Asian supermarkets are very different from conventional supermarkets. This is a field trip for those of you that are new to the whole Asian supermarket experience. Don't freak out at the weird smells: the different spices and herbs and teas and produce and the smell of the meat counter all conglomerate to make a smell that is very unfamiliar to those of us that mostly frequent Bel Air or Whole Foods.

Here is the meat counter: approximately 150 feet of any cut of meat (ANY. REALLY.) you can imagine, as well as TONS of different varieties of fish and shellfish. I consider myself to be quite a foodie but I will always encounter stuff here that I have never seen before.


I just cannot capture the sheer scale of this counter in a picture.

Here is Kidlet 2 getting up close and personal with some assorted shellfish.


Here is a picture of the fish board: this is pretty cool. You pick out a swimming fish and select what you want done. They kill, clean, and (if desired) deep fry your fish. This is good stuff.


Our shopping list here is pretty basic: I pick up some coconut milk (69 cents a can), some Pocky cookies for the Kidlets, some fresh ginger, lemongrass, quail eggs, and canned coconut slices and Hawaiian bread. Remember, Asian cultures regularly eat a lot of things that we consider gourmet, so their stores turn over these items faster, meaning you will get fresher product for a better price. Hence the quail eggs ($1.29/doz versus $3.99 for the EXACT SAME container from the same producer at Nugget).

So anyway, that's why I love exploring different cultures and their grocery stores. The kidlets think it's a field trip. Here are the top five reasons my kids love the SF Supermarket:

1. There are live fish swimming around and live crabs and lobsters to check out.
2. There is a fish tank of live frogs (we pretend the frogs are for pets.)
3. I let them get cool cookies. Here's Kidlet 2 eating some sweet Pocky cookies dipped into chocolate sauce. Yes, it's a Hello Kitty container. He's two. He thinks it's pretty.
4. There is a LOT of activity going on to keep kidlets occupied.
5. There are tons of neat decorations hanging from the ceiling, and that provides Kidlet 3 with a lot of colorful stuff to look at.


I highly recommend going down to South Sac and checking out the Asian markets and the dim sum, whether you have kidlets of your own or not. It's a great cheap way to spend a day.

You can find the SF Supermarket at the intersection of Stockton Blvd and 65th St.

On Mr. Adventure's Utils of Happiness scale, this was a solid 10. Everyone loved dim sum. Everyone loves the SF Supermarket field trip. Everyone loves leftovers, and the 3 kidlets passed out and sawed some serious logs when we got home. And every mom knows that a good nap is the best indicator of a good day.