Perfect This Time: The Perfect Team Corporation

My family has always loved dim sum. In fact, Chinese food in general has always played a role in my life. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of meeting my grandparents, aunts and uncles in Chinatown and ascending the escalators into the overwhelmingly decorated, glittering dim sum parlors and planting ourselves around a tremendous round table and covering every surface with dishes of steaming, glistening dumplings and gently undulating things I had never seen before. We would sit for hours grazing and, most often, the adults discussed politics.

My grandparents helped bring a family to this country from China, and as a child I knew them as aunts, uncles, and cousins. Through them and my grandparents, we met a family that ran an import store on Mott St. and after dim sum, or a meal at the original Peking Duck House, we would stop by the store and I would suck on rice candies that came wrapped in rice paper that slowly dissolved on your tongue. The candies were soft, like sweet, slightly fragrant rice flavored disappearing gum. That's how I remember it, anyway.

This is a long winded way of getting to the point. That my mother is living what are most likely the last days of her life. Armed with that knowledge and the hangover of a generally sleepless night, I awoke yesterday and told The Wife that we were going to Flushing for breakfast. She enjoys Chinese food, but wasn't raised with Soy Sauce in her veins like I was. So, we wound up at Perfect Team Corporation on 37th Ave. This is possibly the best, freshest, most hot and steamy dim sum I have ever had. It tasted like my childhood, my memory, my life and the way of the world-- salty, sour, sweet, spicy, tart, and it just felt right.