Brunch at Monsoon

Wednesday, January 10th, 2007

Filed Under Asian, Capitol Hill, Dim Sum, Vietnamese

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Last Sunday a bunch of us met up for brunch at Monsoon to celebrate Siva’s birthday… He was pleasantly surprised to see everyone there that early in the morning, I had told him that the two of us were just going out for a regular sunday brunch, hadn’t mentioned anything about his birthday… . I even pretended like calling up Monsoon in the morning and reserving a table for two…

Anyway the brunch was the most surprisingly different brunch I have had in a while! The menu had three different styles of dishes: dim sum, traditional vietnamese and french! All the dim sum items came family style, we ordered almost everything in there - the shrimp dumplings were so fresh, but they ran out pretty soon… the favorite was the crispy shrimp and chive wontons… The lotus leaf wrapped pork sticky rice was amazingly flavorful and had the right amount of stickiness to it! We ordered pretty much everything on the dimsum menu, apart from the daikon cakes they ran out of after the first order, I loved everything from the dimsum menu! The 6 piece dimsum sampler for $13 is an amazing deal to figure out which ones you want to get more of! It came with the stuff below and I think the 6th item was the sticky rice! I am not very sure because even though we never ordered any sticky rice, packets of sticky rice magically kept appearing on our table! I think one was part of the sampler, and another order they just messed up…
Daikon Cake and Fried Shrimp & Chive wonton
Shrimp dumpling, BBQ pork bun and Pork Shu mai.We did order some items from the traditional brunch items… The fried eggs and shrimp & pork sausages were the biggest surprise! Who would have thought of making a shrimp sausage, but that was just amazing!!! I didn’t really care for the milk crepe stuffed with a bunch of white meat, but it wasn’t too bad…

Monsoon is one of our favorite dinner destinations… But Monsoon brunch was a totally different experience from Monsoon dinner… Equally great, but different! The first difference is the check, the cheapest meal I have ever had at Monsoon! We ordered too many items for the group of 8, but the check came to about $35 per couple including tip & tax! I have never had a less than $100 per couple dinner from Monsoon ever! I guess the main difference is the fact that we didn’t order any alcohol

Another difference was the whole atmosphere, the place was relatively empty… and the two toddlers we had in the group were running around the restaurant and no one complained! It looked more like a family friendly neighborhood diner than this upscale hip place we are used to having dinner at!

Well, all in all, it was a great brunch, and we are adding this to our list of favorites…

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