Atlantica - 01.01.2006, Page 42

40 AT L A N T I CA
FOOD TOURIST:
The Secret to Ordering Dim Sum
A longtime dim sum fan squares off with chicken feet and other classics in New York City’s Chinatown.
When I moved to San Francisco more than a decade ago, one of
the first things I did was try dim sum, a Cantonese-style weekend
brunch where you get to sample all kinds of steamed and fried dump-
lings, along with various other small dishes.
I was attracted to the loud conversation emanating from the tables
full of Chinese families on Sunday mornings. Dim sum restaurants from
Hong Kong to New York are strikingly similar, with their large, banquet-
sized rooms. I liked the standard workaday metal chairs and the vast
rooms blazoned in red – red drapes, red seat cushions, red lanterns. (The
color symbolizes good luck in Chinese culture, so don’t think you are
surrounded by Maoists when you sit for your dim sum. Red bleeds much
deeper than Marx in China.)
I also loved the logistics of the meal.
Servers who rarely speak English push carts around large dining halls
that are filled to the brim with hundreds of hungry mouths waiting to try
all the treats carried in racks of bamboo baskets and small plates on the
carts. They ask if you want what they’re pushing – “Dumpling, sir?”– and
just increase the volume of their speech until you either take the treat or
wave them off. (Once, years ago, one woman kept screaming Pork! at me,
and after a minute I finally realized she was telling me that the dumplings
I was looking at were full of pork). I loved the Lazy Susans in the middle
of the table that various generations would spin to their heart’s content
as they looked for the right sauce to dip their dumplings in.
After 15 years of dim sum Sundays, I admit that I’ve come to think of
myself as one of those cool foodies on the inside of a unique cultural
experience. I have been in seafood dim sum houses where giant clams
stick to the walls of tanks and I’ve popped fried taro root in my mouth
after digging into baked BBQ pork buns. I’ve eaten Siu Ma, pork dump-
lings, countless times and sampled every bizarre twist on seafood imagin-
able. My favorite: the fried stuffed crab claws.
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