![]() And when the spoken word seems to be getting nowhere, you can certainly look, point at something appealing, and not walk away with an empty stomach.Įveryone has favorites. ![]() Betty says most waiters speak enough English to help you distinguish pork from shrimp or chicken from vegetable. How civilized.Ĭantonese is the lingua franca of a dim sum restaurant, but don't worry if you don't know a siu bau from a soi gau. If your host pours you a cup of jasmine or oolong, you thank him wordlessly by tapping your index and middle fingers. ![]() Pull the lid off your teapot, and it will be refilled without a word. Imagine a restaurant rolling its whole menu past your table for your approval.Ĭarts arrive, patrons choose, and waiters keep track of the bill by counting the piled-up plates. The atmosphere inside a dim sum restaurant may seem like chaos, but a closer look shows a set of rituals that have developed for a thousand years. A large restaurant like China Pearl keeps a small army of cooks busy preparing some 80 delicacies. Americans with a taste for adventure can find them in every major city in the nation.ĭim sum comes in an incredible variety of shapes and flavors, You'll find crescent-shaped dumplings filled with juicy shrimp, white steamed buns filled with pork, fist-sized balls of sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves, and even a plate of tiny, flavorful spareribs. Today, dim sum restaurants are the hottest trend in Chinese food. In America, some of the first Chinese restaurants built were specifically made for dim sum, places where tired laborers could gather, celebrate, and feel like emperors for a little while. In the Cantonese dialect, dim sum means ''a place in the heart,'' and for centuries, Chinese have thronged to neighborhood eateries for a breakfast of dumplings, tea, and conversation. ''Americans eat the Dunkin' Donuts or a muffin,'' says Betty, as her four-year-old daughter, Sarah, tugs on her sleeve, asking for a shrimp dumpling. But for my friends Betty and David Li and their family, who are regular customers here, it's a welcome taste of home. Waitresses wearing bow ties and maroon waistcoats weave their way between tables, pushing steel carts stacked high with plates of steaming dumplings.įor the uninitiated, a dim sum restaurant like this one is a cacophonous feast of the senses, complete with clatter, chatter, and unfamiliar plates. IT'S noon on a recent Saturday, and the China Pearl restaurant in Boston's Chinatown is crowded.
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