Restaurant: Daimo
City: Richmond, CA

I had dinner with my parents and a friend at a Cantonese restaurant last night. At the end of the dinner, we were served red bean soup. It had been a while since I last had red bean soup at the end of dinner, so I had to post this here! Not all Cantonese restaurants serve red bean soup at the end of the meal; only some higher-end ones will serve it.

I’m actually not a fan of red bean soup even though I like red bean paste… I’m just weird like that! I’ll still have a few spoonfuls to be polite.

Here’s some info about the Chinese red bean soup, from Wikipedia:

In China, red bean soup (紅豆汤, pinyin: hóng dòu tāng) is a popular dish. The soup is commonly thinner than the Japanese oshiruko version. It is categorized as a tang shui糖水, (pinyin: táng shǔi) (literally translated as sugar water), or sweet soup. It is often served cold during the summer, and hot in the winter. Leftover red bean soup can also be frozen to make ice pops and is a popular dessert.

In Cantonese cuisine, a red bean soup made from rock sugar, sun-dried tangerine peels, and lotus seeds is commonly served as a dessert at the end of a restaurant or banquet meal. Common variations include the addition of ingredients such as sago (西米, pinyin: xī mi), tapioca, coconut milk, ice cream, glutinous rice balls, or purple rice. The two types of sugar used interchangeably are rock sugar and sliced sugar (片糖).

And some more info, also from Wikipedia, as red bean soup is one of the many types of tong sui:

Tong sui literally translated as “sugar water”, also known as tim tong, is a collective term for any sweet, warm soup or custard served as a dessert at the end of a meal in Cantonese cuisine. Tong sui are a Cantonese specialty and are rarely found in other regional cuisines of China. Outside of Cantonese-speaking communities, soupy desserts generally are not recognized as a distinct category, and the term tong sui is not used.