Let's talk Dim Sum.

Friends of mine recently discovered an apparently good Dim Sum place near my house. I haven’t gone, in part because I watch my carb intake for blood sugar reasons…and I just don’t know what I’m getting into there. How hard would it be to avoid the “mostly dough” and sugary items, yet still have a good experience?

Everything comes by on a cart. Just don’t choose the doughy items. There are usually meat and vegetable items.

Went today, after working legs, hard.
That’s how a rationalized pigging out like I did!

Man, I love those sesame balls for dessert.

(Sadly, we missed the Sticky Rice).

One dim sum place here in Sacramento has ball-shaped objects with shrimp filling, coated in rice. They are WONDERFUL!

Lots of Asian grocery stores here, but I have yet to find these in frozen format, so I keep hoping for a recipe.

I don’t disagree with you at all, but MSG is a migraine trigger for me. I have reacted to enough stuff without knowing (including regular ration packs) to know. I generally take some Imitrex after Dim Sum (I know better, I should avoid it, but it’s SO yummy).

I prefer the Dim Sum places where you can order off the menu, mostly because I have found the cart stuff somewhat mushy.

Isn’t it true that MSG is a naturally occurring substance in the brain and that you cannot be allergic to something that occurs naturally in the body? The whole MSG scare seems like hocum to me.

Yes. Yes. But where am I supposed to find them in Texas?

Not going to derail the thread (especially since I LOVE Dim Sum), but I don’t think of it as an allergy, it’s a trigger for a migraine. I don’t buy into the “whole MSG is evil” thing, it just happens to cause migraines for me. So does some red wine and swings in barometric pressure. So, if I ever meet you for Dim Sum, we’ll have to have white wine :wink:

You should also be aware, it’s not quite like Texas BBQ, but it’s still so delicious.

Deal!

The wife likes the chicken feet, but I could never get into that. But just about all the rest of dim sun I do like.

Oh yes I know what it’s like. I’m not a Texan; I had these delicious things in California. I was merely bewailing the fact that I don’t know where to go here in Austin to find Dim Sum. (It took me almost four years living here to find decent falafel and I get it at the mall at a place called Potato Club, so maybe there is a similar Dim Sum heaven here and if so I hope someone will tell me about it!)

I likewise had no idea what you guys were talking about. All Chinese that I am aware of comes in buffet form, with English labels to tell me what the food is, and it’s never something that has a filling. It’s meat in a sauce with veggies, which you can put on rice or noodles. And then a few side items, like shish kabobs, those green bean pods, crab ragoon, and then your soups.

Would they really not tell you what it was if you asked? Even in any restaurant where the staff doesn’t speak much English, they always speak enough to tell me what something is. ’

Also, are you saying you buy the dish specifically, or is it like a buffet, where you pay and get to try as many or as few as you want? The latter I’d be more fond of.

Of course they would tell you. Some people are just paranoid.

It’s not a buffet. There are several servers roaming around with carts, each of which carries multiple items on small plates, like tapas. You point out which ones you want, if any. Usually each plate has 2-6 pieces of whatever on it.

Each dish is assigned a price point. One common way is for your table to have a card on it and each time you choose something from a cart, the server puts a mark in the appropriate spot. At the end, someone takes your card and tallies it up to calculate your bill.

It’s not expensive, and we usually order about six different items - comes to about $40. Lots of dumplings, potstickers, onion crepes.

Well, sorry, I didn’t really mean to derail this thread into a discussion of MSG sensitivities. But a difficulty I often have as Chinese restaurants is that, in many of them, I can’t get a reliable answer just by asking. The wait staff either doesn’t understand the question, or doesn’t know what MSG is, or doesn’t know the answer. I have learned that I should only eat in Chinese restaurants if I see it actually printed on the menu (or in the window) that there is no MSG.

Anecdote: I considered trying the fare at a Thai or some-such fast-food place in a mall food court. I asked the worker there: “Does your food have MSG in it?”

She answered: “Is good for you? Yeeeeeeeees, gooooooooood for you!”

You’ve never been to a Chinese Restaurant that wasn’t a buffet? Really? Where on earth do you live?

It actually is very much like a buffet except the food comes to you (on little carts) instead of you going to the food. If you miss the Har Gao cart the first time, another one will be by in a bit. If you don’t see a specific thing you want, just ask one of the ladies and they’ll give you some idea of when that cart will be coming, or if by chance they are out of that thing for the moment.

The one downside, as noted, is that it’s not designed to dine solo. You could do it, but you wouldn’t be able to try very many things unless you took a bunch of doggie bags home (or just threw most of it away). Each plate is typically designed for 3-4 people to share. But you can make do with just two diners. I’ve done that many times.

Dim sum is best when you’re with a group of people. That way you can have many different dishes, rather than filling up on just a few. Most of the dim sum places around here serve three items on a plate, so it works well for the number of people in your party to be a multiple of three.

Texas gets kolaches, and the good Lord deemed that no place should get two types of the heavenly meat filled doughnuts, lest the people start to believe they are already in heaven.

Well, iiandyiiii, I have only had the sweet kolaches, never savory, so I guess I’ll have to try that. But the Bao I had with BBQ pork in Los Angeles was different from kolaches; the bun part was much lighter. The kolaches I’ve had here were pretty heavy, and the people I was eating with were saying how wonderful they were so I thought that’s just how they are. (I didn’t care for them actually.) The Bao I had were baked, not steamed, and were heavenly. Oh my, now I am starving!

I can’t absolutely say “never,” but I don’t remember it. I know for sure that the Chinese places within lunch/dinner driving distance all have buffets, though one is small and only available for lunch. And there was one I went to on trips that had a buffet, too. I think it might’ve been a Panda Express, but I’m not sure. I just know it was a Chinese place we saw on the way, went in and found a buffet, like I expected.

I mean, I know that other places must exist–if only because some are tiny and some are take-out only. Or actually have delivery, which is something I’ve never experienced.

I’m in northwest Arkansas. To me, Applebee’s is semi-fancy (and more expensive than local places), not bottom of the barrel like it seems to be to some of you guys. We have local pasta places, but Olive Garden is a treat due to the sheer variety. Golden Corral was even a treat as a kid.

So I know my dining out experiences are different.