Mayflower: A Sunday Morning Dim Sum Treat

Chinatown is a daunting place. As you step off the red line, you enter an alternate universe where all businesses appear to center around food. As you wander down the street, you’re confronted with helpful names like “Won Kow Restaurant” or “Yee Heung Seafood House.” Some of the restaurants try to draw you in by supplementing their Chinese names with English ones like “Triple Crown Restaurant”. Some eschew their Chinese names all together and go for names like “Go 4 Food.”

One of these restaurants calls itself “Mayflower Restaurant,” in English anyways. Inexplicably, its Chinese name is more like “Beautiful World,” but who am I to complain? Now, Mayflower serves all of your regular Chinese fare. You come in for dinner and you can get your Mapo Tofu or Chow Mein. The truth is, after dinner you’ll walk out feeling as if you’ve eaten a generic meal at a generic Chinese restaurant. That’s because that’s what you will have just done. Don’t go for dinner. Instead, when you wake up on a Sunday morning and have the urge to eat an unconscionable amount of Chinese food (for a very reasonable price), saddle up and head on over to Mayflower for some dim sum.

If you aren’t familiar with dim sum, you should be. It’s a small plate Chinese brunch. In a more traditional setting, you sit down and get swarmed by a group of ladies trying to sell you little plates of dumplings and chicken feet out of their push carts. It’s fun, but unfortunately Mayflower doesn’t do that. Step over to the Phoenix Restaurant if you want to try that out.  Instead, you just circle your desired food items on a giant paper picture menu and out comes the food.

I’ve tried several of the dim sum places in Chicago, and I can unequivocally say that Mayflower offers the best value for money that you can get. Sure the dim sum is a little fancier over at Phoenix, but it really isn’t much better, and it costs twice as much. Seriously, you can completely fill up on food and walk out of there paying $12 total. The service isn’t great, but that’s not something you should expect from a Chinese restaurant anyways.

As far as the food goes, you really can’t go wrong. Order three or four dishes per person and just try everything. Try the dumplings, or the buns, or the turnip cakes. Try the rice porridge with the thousand year egg. If you’re really feeling adventurous, try the Phoenix Talons, usually less glamorously referred to as chicken feet. At $4 a plate or less, you can’t go wrong.

Name: Mayflower Restaurant

Location: 225 S Wentworth Ave (In Chinatown)

Phone: (312) 808-1322

Price: $10-$15 per person for dim sum