Dim sum restaurant to open in Wallingford

No longer will North Seattle residents need to venture to the International District to indulge in dim sum. Restaurateur Po Lee, who owned House of Hong in the International District for eight years, is building a new Chinese restaurant that will specialize in dim sum  in the old Home Realty building at 4900 Stone Way.

Lee told us that the restaurant, called Bamboo Village, will open in late May or early June and will serve dim sum all day, every day. “Customers always asked to have dim sum later in the day,” Lee said. Bamboo Village will also have a full menu of mostly Cantonese and Mandarin dishes.

Instead of the carts that most dim sum restaurants use to move the steamed and fried dishes among tables, Bamboo Village will have patrons mark their choices on order slips. Lee said that the dim sum restaurants in Vancouver, B.C., use that system now so that the food will be fresher.

Lee is in the middle of a significant build-out at the site now. He’s adding 1500 square feet to the building; the  finished restaurant will seat about 100 people. That’s a fraction of the 500-person capacity of House of Hong, but Lee said that he wanted a smaller eatery that would be easier to manage. Bamboo Village also will have about 15 parking spaces.