The Nevada Sagebrush

CaiE’s Oriental Café
- Address: 770 S. Meadows Parkway
- Hours: Daily 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
- Price range: $7 to $15
- Grade: B+

If any of you readers are like me, you love sushi. I am not talking about just a roll or two, I mean the all-you-can-eat deals that leave you so full you must vomit in the parking lot to sustain a somewhat open airway. Don’t judge me; we have all been there.

But sometimes your stomach and wallet need a little change in what kind of all-you-can-eat food you have from the great Oriental beyond. CaiE’s Oriental Café can be this for you with a little thing they call dim sum.

In Reno, we aren’t exposed to any places with the option of dim sum, let alone good options, despite its prevalence within  close California cities. So, when a place comes along that has it, it is normal to feel like it is the second coming of Jesus — only this time he brought delicious food.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with dim sum, in layman’s terms, it is virtually a bunch of small-portioned appetizer-like dishes that contain different types of food. When all of these are put together, it becomes a feast of champions that would make even Zeus question reality.

The point is that CaiE’s has this option and it is only $13.75 for all-you-can-eat. That is a ridiculously good price if you consider that most all-you-can-eat sushi places will leave you out $20 after all is said and done.

Granted the quality isn’t that of a dim sum place in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown, but it is incredibly close (and then some). The same goes for the selection.  Patrons are given a choice of about 10 dim sum favorites, including a variety of pot stickers, spring rolls, siu mai (dumplings with meat inside) and many more.

This can be good for someone who has never had dim sum, because traditional eateries often pile mounds of random food on your plate. It isn’t until later that you find out you are eating chicken feet, testicles and just about anything else you would not want to eat on a chicken.

Aside from the joyous addition of dim sum, their regular entrées rock as well. You are given your choice of meat or vegetables and a side of brown or white rice that comes out to be a bit larger than the regular two-entrée meal you would get at a place like Panda Express. The cost for an entrée is around $8, depending on what kind of meat you order, which in my eyes, is a good price.

But probably the best part about it all is that the ingredients taste so impossibly fresh. Trying to grasp how fresh it is would be like trying to understand how to divide by zero; you will end up exploding your mind and causing a huge rip in time. When you eat an onion, you taste the tangy bite that an onion should have. When you eat a piece of meat, you are at first perplexed at the taste because the junk we usually eat and call meat has jaded our taste buds, when this is the real deal.

So the food is great and is at a very fair cost, so what else could they do now? Drink plus dim sum specials, you say? This is so heavenly it is borderline-sacrilegious at this point. Though there is a somewhat limited selection of beer and a pretty good selection of wines, it is nice to have this coupled with dim sum. They have specials like a 28-ounce mug of beer with pot stickers for $4 and a pitcher of beer with a large platter of dim sum for $15, just to name a few.

So overall, CaiE’s has done well in making good tasting, well-priced food with the addition of dim sum, earning it a B+. Really, the only thing that is not giving them an A is their lack of selection, but for the meantime, I can wait on chicken feet and enjoy a great alternative to sushi.

Casey Durkin can be reached at cdurkin@nevadasagebrush.com.

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