EAT Magazine, March/April 2005

Dim Sum 101

Seems like there are as many restaurants in Vancouver and the lower mainland serving dim sum breakfast as there are eateries serving eggs and bacon. Literally meaning something like ‘to touch the heart’ or ‘little pieces so dear to the heart’, it refers to the vast array (80 items at Floata) of dumplings and other tidbits that southern Chinese people like to eat with their tea at breakfast or at lunchtime. Some restaurants serve dim sum from 7.30 am, others from 11am and most wrap it up around mid-day. When restaurants offer so-called dim sum on the evening menus, they may be referring to a few lonely dumplings as starters, not the whole ‘kit and kaboodle’. Dim sum experts always list the snacks on separate, smaller menus that are roughly divided into steamed dumplings, sweet dishes and cheung fun. Try to order a selection of different types of food, with plenty of light steamed dumplings to counterbalance the heavier deep-fried morsels. If you are lunching with a large group, make sure you order multiples of everything, keeping in mind most dishes consist of two to four items.

Sunday lunchtime is almost impossible to get into some places such as the Pink Pearl -- one of Vancouver’s icons. A dim sum feast, as any Cantonese family will tell you, is one of the best gastronomic bargains in town: where else can you eat such high-quality food to your heart’s content for less than twenty bucks?

Dim sum are served as a series of tiny dishes, usually from steamer baskets, each containing three or four dumplings, perhaps, or a plate of steamed gai lan or a small helping of spare ribs or seafood. The possibilities are endless…You can order according to appetite or curiosity - just sit back and peek at everything; usually servers will come by your table and ask if you would like whatever is on their cart. The bonus with dim sum is that, however bigger your eyes are from your belly, however extravagantly you order, it is just about impossible to break the price barrier of thirty bucks a head, even in the high-end places. Then only thing to remember is that while most of the dumplings and other items won’t set you back more than a few dollars per item, waiting staff may tempt you with house specials, such as Peking duck or roast suckling pig, and these tend to be more expensive. Week-ends are mainly for families, and most places are loud and boisterous. Vegetarians may have a lean time of it, as most dishes contain either meat or seafood.

Tea is the traditional accompaniment to the feast. Waiters should keep your teapots filled throughout the meal; just leave the teapot lid tilted at an angle or upside down to signal a re-fill. The following is a guide to the basic canon of dim sum served in and around Vancouver (spelling may vary depending on the transliteration used).

Char slu bao: fluffy steamed bun stuffed with barbequed pork in a sweet-savoury sauce.
Char siu puff pastry or roast pork puff: a triangular puff-pastry snack, filled with barbequed pork, scattered with sesame seeds and baked.

Chiu Chow fun gwor: soft steamed dumpling with a wheat-starch wrapper, filled with pork, vegetables and peanuts. Chiu Chow is a regional Chinese cooking style popular in Hong Kong.

Har gau: steamed minced prawn dumpling with a translucent wheat-starch wrapper.
Nor mai gai or steamed glutinous rice in lotus leaf: a lotus-leaf parcel enclosing moist sticky rice with pork, mushrooms, salty duck eggs and other bits and pieces, infused with the herby fragrance of the leaf.
Paper-wrapped prawns: tissue-thin rice paper enclosing plump prawn meat, sometimes with sesame seeds, deep-fried.

Siu loon bao: a Shanghai-style round dumpling with a whirled pattern on top and a juicy minced pork filling.
Siu mai: a small steamed dumpling with an open top, a wheatflour wrapper and a minced pork filling. Traditionally topped with a little orange crab roe.

Taro or Yam croquette: an egg-shaped, deep-fried dumpling with a frizzy, melt-in-your-mouth outer layer made of mashed taro, and a filling of savoury minced pork. Sometimes vegetarian and filled with more taro.
Pastry bun with red bean paste:

Chinese cuisine can be divided into four main styles. Generally speaking, these are the fresh, natural Cantonese cooking of the south; the sweeter, oilier food of Shanghai and the east; the strongly flavoured, spicy cuisine of Sichuan and other parts of western China; and northern cookery, which is typified by the use of certain ingredients like lamb and spring onions, and by famous dishes such as Mongolian hot-pot and Peking duck rather than by any dominant flavouring style. But real aficionados know that almost every county town has its own culinary specialties.
Chinese restaurateurs, the majority of whom are Cantonese, may name their establishments after famous culinary regions, or borrow a few Szechuan dishes for their menus, but genuine regional flavours are hard to find. Keep searching and you will soon find a favourite haunt, there’s a lot to choose from.

A few tips:
Set menus in Chinese restaurants are often outdated western stereotypes of Chinese food, featuring only clichéd dishes such as lemon chicken balls, sweet and sour pork and mushroom fried rice. Our advice is to avoid them at all costs. Order, instead, from the main menu and, if possible, seasonal specials list. Sometimes the ‘fresh sheet’ may only be written on the wall in Chinese characters – don’t be afraid to ask.

The art of ordering a Chinese meal lies in assembling a variety of dishes, differing from one another in terms of their main ingredients, cooking methods and flavours. Starters are easy; just order as you please and remember there is life beyond the usual deep-fried snacks (a cold salted chicken platter or steamed seafood can make a delicious beginning to the meal). For main courses, aim to order about one dish for every person in your party, and then one or two extra, and share everything. Try to balance dry, deep-fried dishes with slow hot-pots and crisp stir-fried; rich roast duck with fresh vegetables; gentle tastes with spicy flavours. Ask your waiter about seasonal greens; hyou may find the restaurant has pak choi, pea shoots, water spinach and other marvellous Chinese treats you see at vegetable stands but don’t know how to prepare it. Most Chinese people fill up on plain steamed rice, which is a good foil to the flavours of other food and much more comfortable than that old takeaway staple, fried rice with anything.