Po Tot (Egg Custard Tart) [some places have this, which I prefer, but most have its sibling Don Tot]
Sesame Balls with red bean paste
Sweet Tofu Pudding with ginger/sugar syrup
Har Cheung (shrimp noodle rolls)
Shanghai Dumpling (this depends on the place, some specialize in it, while others are kind of mediocre)
Fried shrimp dumpling
I’m not a huge fan of turnip cake (needs sauce to be interesting), baked pork buns (gets stuck to the roof of my mouth half the time), and chicken feet (flavor is fine, but it’s way too much work), but of course YMMV.
Final aside: One of the best things about dim sum is trying something off the cart without trying it or even knowing what it is. We’ve stumbled onto some of our favorite dishes this way!
My favorite dim sum item, since I was five years old, has been steamed chicken dumplings that look like the ones on this page.
I also highly recommend baked pork buns, although the steamed ones are also very good.
For the past 47 years, my favorite restaurant has been the Yank Sing, a San Francisco dim sum restaurant. Check out their deem sum gallery to see some of the other items I love, including the Har Gau (shrimp) dumplings, lettuce cups, potstickers and sesame balls.
Love dim sum. And the best places are the ones where there’s no chance of you being able to communicate with staff if you don’t speak Mandarin.
Which does make it a bit difficult for me since I don’t eat port or other red meats and with many dishes it is hard to know what exactly is in it.
But I still get by and enjoy it. As said, worst case is you take something you don’t like and now you know. Same advantage for experimentation as with conveyor belt sushi.
But definitely best if you can get a group of 4-6 people so more dishes can be sampled.
Also, chicken feet can be very good or very bad depending on the place.
I really like the chicken feet. They are sticky braise-y good, intensely chicken-y. Almost no meat on them, you just nibble on they tiny bones and spit em out. Give them a try!
Also, Dim Sum is traditionally a communal meal, it’s not really something designed for a single diner. But it’s great when you go with a large group since you can order a little bit of everything and, if there’s something you don’t care for, there’s always someone else in the group willing to gobble it up.
I really like the chicken feet. They are sticky braise-y good, intensely chicken-y. Almost no meat on them, you just nibble on they tiny bones and spit em out. Give them a try!
It’s like saying “I’ve never been to an Italian restaurant, what should I get?” and people saying “Oh Spaghetti! Spaghetti is great!”
The chicken feet and soup dumplings might be great at one place and terrible at another. You can’t safely say across the board that a dish is good or bad.
How it usually works in my area (which is predominantly Chinese) is the one dim sum place will be THE best and then it will get busy and crowded and quality will suffer and another place will have upped their game and suddenly people realize this other place is the best, and the crowds go thre, repeat, repeat, repeat. Find out what is in things and if it sounds good, try it.
Yes, of course not every dish is going to be prepared well at every dim sum restaurant, but given that this type of cuisine is unfamiliar to many (even those who have eaten at other Chinese restaurants), I think it’s reasonable to suggest particular dishes that one might find appealing.
One note of warning: I’ve found that the bill can rise very quickly as a dim sum restaurant. Keep an eye on how much you’ve ordered and what the total adds up to.
Pork buns (baked) are basically glazed donuts filled with sweet barbecued pork, and they are one of the greatest things that God ever created on Earth.
Do dim sum restaurants commonly use a lot of MSG in their dishes? How would one find out?
Some friends shanghaied me into going to a dim sum place in San Francisco about 30 years ago. Sorry to say, it went badly for me. I barely swallowed a bite or two and had a massive unpleasant gastronomic reaction, whereupon I spent about an hour in the bathroom upstairs while my buddies ate.
I’m almost sure it was a massive MSG reaction, but I don’t really know that for sure.
One would ask them. I’m sure they’ve been asked before. But I think you know the only way to find out for sure if they’re giving you something that makes you sick.
[Quote=Tired and Cranky]
When you see the cart come by, point at something that looks good and hopefully it will be delicious. If not, you’re out a few bucks and you’ve learned something about dim sum you don’t like.
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Here’s the thing: any individual dish is only a couple of bucks, dim sum is fairly inexpensive. It’s not fair to compare to a restaurant where, if you try something new and don’t like it, you’re out $25 or more. At dim sum, you can try eight or nine dishes, and if you don’t like one, so not a big deal.
It is a shame so many dim sum restaurants resort to printed menus, the carts are more fun and more authentic. The best printed menus have color pictures of the dishes. Our problem is that the servers often don’t speak enough English (or enough culinary English) to be able to describe what’s in them. “What kind of meat is that?” “Fmxmfylm” isn’t helpful.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear - I love Dim Sum (and have eaten it in many countries!)
But I like to know what the filling is - and I expect the staff to be able to tell me.
I don’t want to order ‘random’ food in case I don’t like it (or even am allergic :eek: )
Unless it is explicitly advertised as such, basically any authentic Chinese restaurant (outside of the ultra high-end) is going use MSG. In Chinese food it is as common and unremarkable as salt. You’d have to ask ahead of time or look for a restaurant that advertises itself as MSG free.
I don’t want to start a great debate, and anything is possible, but the clinical evidence for MSG reactions is poor. Double-blind studies have not been able to identify a consistent reaction.
Is this the only time you’ve eaten Chinese food? If you typically eat Chinese food without this type of reaction, I’d say it’s far more likely that you got some bad seafood or other food poisoning.
I eat dim sum all the time with no problem, but I once did have a similar terrible reaction to a Chinese restaurant meal, which I’m convinced was about the shellfish. I still love Chinese food, but I’ve crossed that particular restaurant off my list.
Just point at stuff and ask what it is. Even if you don’t get a clear explanation, try it anyway. Just like Tired and Cranky says:
I like chicken feet, but it’s pretty much this. It’s basically chicken skin fried in whatever sauce they’ve put on it. There’s nothing unusual, surprising, or unpleasant about it, if you are already familiar with what chicken skin tastes like.
