A funny thing happened on the way to the dumpling house.
I wanted to pay homage (and perhaps have a snack) at Mang
Kiko, the lechon stall at Somerset, but when I got there,
there was no sign that it had ever existed - the area was
paved over as a skateboard rink that seemed to have been
decades old. Oh, well, thought I, another day, another
alternate universe. Another funny thing. When we got to the
Paragon mall, I couldn't find the restaurant, though I'd
eaten there several times before. Turns out I'd forgotten a
crucial left turn in the rabbit warrens under the shopping
center (an alternate universe for sure! - next year, it will
be a right turn, mark my words). We got there right on time
only to find a crowd of hungry fliers milling about in the
corridor out front. It turns out someone apparently had
cancelled our reservation by mistake, and the staff were
hustling to get tables set up in the back room.

Our table featured chiefs and indians in about the right
proportion, though there still turned out to be some
duplication in ordering, not that much of a problem, as
at the far end there were some young trenchermen who would
(and did) eat almost anything. Over at our end, three
finicky eaters in a row, spaceman, gvdIAD, and lili. More
for me, I thought evilly, though that turned out not to be
the case.

The small steamed soup dumplings are the specialty of the
house. These are the dish that earned at least one of the
outlets a Michelin star (which all the others have taken
credit for, as if by osmosis); they come in various flavors,
and we got several - pork (the classic), pork and crab
(Greg likes these), and chicken (I don't know whose
fault these were). They came all jumbled up, several trays
at a time, without any indication of what was what. Solution
- I took one from each tray and pronounced which was which.
Greg was ceded most of the crabbies, as that was pretty
much all he was going to eat. I ended up with mostly chicken
- rightly eschewed by most of the company -, which didn't
have the intensity of flavor of the pork ones.

There were the usual run of shrimp pastries (good but not
special and quite expensive) and big bao dze (some filled
with pork and crab, a mistake, as the crab adds to the cost
but gets lost in the puffy wondrous bread); also some
oddities. Someone ordered star-anise beef shin; I changed
the order to two; three came. I love this dish - sort of
Chinese souse made of tendony meat, not unlike what topped
the noodles at the First lounge -, but others not so much,
so I ended up with a bunch of that, too. Greg was intrigued
by the pork and cucumber in hoisin, so we got that, and it
turned out to be dreadful and was sent over to the other
end of the table, where it may or may not have been eaten.

The bill was more than it would have been with centralized
and careful ordering but still quite within range, even
including an arbitrary number of Tiger beers.