Favorite Dim Sum dishes

[spork]

Chinese Dim Sum is the best restaurant lunch experience (hands down, including the venerable sandwich).

Do you have a favorite dish? I don't. I just look at waiters' carts as they pass by my table, listen to their offerings (mostly incomprehensible), and point at my choices. I do look for, though, whether for family fun or business meeting...

sticky/sweet/glutinous rice
Chinese green beans/broccoli, served with oyster sauce
shrimp in rice noodle, actually in a steamed kudzu starch wonton
dumplings with various fillings, if I like the kitchen
and just on weekends for most places, roast succulent pork

I also like taro/rice turnover cakes and have learned never to point my finger at a dim sum dish of BBQ pork.

[qmax]

Shu mei
Chicken feet.

[spork]

I also grab chicken feet because it's tasty, gnarly, and shuts people up busily eating.

[mexican mama]

Mine are pork SioMai (pork dumplings) and Siopao ( steamed buns)..also chinese style fried rice w/sweet and sour pork! I love this stuff!

[spork]

I have to describe the succulent pork...

It's roasted whole, or half.
The dim sum plate usually comes with a first bed of sharply pickled juliennes of carrot and daikon radish. On top is a mound of 1-inch cubed pork, each is very white with one side having a dark crisp skin of crunch. It's fatty, but well cooked I can't tell or taste the difference between fat and meat. Covering the mound, or on the side, are 6x1-inch coin-thin strips of the roasted pig's refried skin, like addictive chicharonnes chips. A saucer of straight hoi sin sauce is usually provided for dipping.

Dim Sum is a lot like Spanish Tapas.

[bandonjan]

My favorite is the steamed pork buns, shrimp stuffed dumplings, sticky rice and the custard tarts. I don't get Dim Sum around here and I really miss it.

[Claire]

Oh, I am so jealous. We cannot get dim sum here, and it all sounds good to me. I've never worked up the courage for chicken feet, but it has been so long that I'd probably welcome it! When we lived in Hawaii, I could buy shu mai in the freezer section of the military commissary. I miss the international flair of military life in those days.

[spork]

dim sum also goes by the name "yum cha," which I like because it describes "yummy stuff with tea." Great restaurants will serve you gratis a pot of your choice of tea, good restaurants have waiters who recognize the universal sign of an empty pot, a tilted lid.

I should also describe shrimp in rice noodle...
Imagine a translucent ravioli square/triangle (rice is okay but a kudzu pasta becomes completely opaque) with a single curled pink prawn. Inside the pocket was added a snuff-spoon of congealed pork fat that melts as it steams. It's finished with a big spoon pour of diluted oyster sauce. Good stuff, a great bite, finished with tea.

[PrincessFiona60]

I've never had a real Dim Sum meal...would really like to try it.

[spork]

Traditional "sticky rice" is a small fist size triangular portion wrapped in lotus leaves and steam for a very long time, so that each rice kernel maintains their glistening pearlescence while attaining a magical stickiness due to their exterior glutin. Flavor comes mostly from fried rice ingredients, maybe dried shrimp and mushroom that work well with long cooking. Sweetness often comes from lap chong, a common asian sweet sausage. Part of the fun is opening up the lotus leaves.

I also like dim sum plates of spareribs in black bean sauce. Tasty mable-size nbbits. And sesame balls with sweet bean paste from the dessert cart.