When I was little, my parents weren’t shy about taking me to restaurants with them. I guess I was mostly a well-behaved kid, preferring to doodle or nap or watch people rather than cause a ruckus. Because of that, I got to experience a wider variety of foods than my peers.

While other families spent their Sundays at Waffle House, Sizzler, or Olive Garden, we often spent ours at dim sum. The array of small dishes, the aroma of XO sauce, the clicking of chopsticks –  those are my favorite Sunday memories.

I got to relive a little of that last Sunday, when Magneto and I left the cozy confines of Mid-City and ventured out to San Gabriel Valley for the first time in months. We headed straight to our favorite dumpling place: Long Xing Yi for their soup dumplings, cucumber salad, and mystery pastry buns.

I know, I know, you XLB experts are scoffing right now because Juicy Dumplings, as Long Xing Yi is commonly known, isn’t exactly topping anyone’s list of soup dumplings. But there’s never a wait, the place is air conditioned, the ladies making the dumplings move faster than the speed of light, and I’ve never had a bad dumpling there. Never, not once.

Since this was our cheat day, we had two types of XLB (pork and not-sweet pork), the cucumbers, and what turned out to be salt and pepper bbq pork with veggies encased in a flaky, buttery, wholly delicious and confoundingly flexible crust.

And now…all I can think about is going right back out there for more XLB. #needmoreweekend