This is a serious thread for discussion in the Green Room. I've been thinking lately - Dim Sum, is definitely not worth the price. For those who don't know what Dim Sum is, well, in short, it is chinese breakfast. Basically, you go into a chinese restaurant, and they seat your party, which then gets a checklist on a piece of paper for the table. Once everyone is comfy, workers at the restaurant push these carts around. On the carts, there are a bunch of goodies on it. The people pick what they want to eat, and the person pushing the cart marks down what you had, and then at the end, you pay. Every cart has something different, so you can pick and choose what you want. Each dish costs between $3-$6, and you can get a lot of different things, from really yummy stuff like BBQ Beef Buns to disgusting things like Cow Tripe and Chicken Feet. Each dish usually serves 3 people. So say, a dish comes, it'll have 3 shrimp balls in it. Or 3 Beef Buns. They make it three because hardly any group consists of 3 people. Either they are one or two couples, or they are a party of several people. I mean, come on, who is happy to go as the third wheel to these things? This becomes a problem, because when there are four people, and the shrimp balls or whatever only come in 3's, it forces your group to order two orders of whatever you are eating, thereby making it so if each person has one, there are 2 left over. Just to throw you off, occasionally they will have a dish that comes around that contains 5 items instead of 3. And the Chinese people snicker at you all in the back of the kitchen as they make money hand over fist. This has led me to the conclusion that Dim Sum, although a great Chinese-Western tradition, and very yummy to boot, is a rip off of epic proportions only second to Sushi. Every Dim Sum event that I've been to has cost me at least 20 bucks. Not only that, but most of it is really oily, making you feel like you've just had fast food for breakfast. So in conclusion, Dim Sum is NOT worth the price. But I will continue to go - and I'm going tomorrow, because it is on her dime, and not mine.
You just have to be aware of the game, and play it to yoiur advantage. Discuss it within your group before you go, and be ready to divvy up a smaller dish among a group of 4 as the Chinese proprietors cry over your apparent stinginess. Caveat Empor, as always. Forewarned is forearmed. Rig the game in your favor, gorram it! Use the culture. In China, I hear it is polite to leave a bite or two of food on the plate to assure the host you've been fed enough. If they try and fuck you on the dim sum, make sure there is nothing but crumbs left- let the fuckers know their efforts are inadequate, causing them to lose face. They hate that.
I always thought Dim sum was an appetizer of sorts- served as an hors devoures by a restaraunt owner to a valued customer. A delicacy of sorts, not to be turned down with impunity. Or maybe I've just read too much James Clavell.
No, it's chinese breakfast. (although the hors devoures comparison ain't that far off the mark.) It's a tradition back in China, and I have to say the food is pretty authentic. In most places, they have not "Westernized" it like what they serve during their evening dinner menus. Yet white people continue to go too. I wouldn't recommend you go if you don't have a guide. There are definitely things a person with western tastes would find amazing there, but also a lot of stuff that would test your acid reflex.
So the scenes in Tai Pan are off base? Serious question. I know Clavell takes a lot of liberties, but even so with the Dim Sum thing?
Can't answer this - the only time I had Dim Sum was on someone else's dime. Was good though. Except the chicken feet. Avoid those.
Actually... you are wrong. Chinese traditionally do not offer things in the number 4 because the pronunciation for the # four is "si" which is the same as the pronunciation for the word that means "death" or "to die". That's why most authentic Chinese places give servings in 3 or 5. Another interesting thing to note is that the word for 8 is similar to the word for good luck, so 8 is considered the luckiest number there. There's a story about the old area code in a heavily-chinese area of california that used to be 888. However, this was later taken for toll-free calls (as 800 became too full). The new area code was 444. Some people claim that this was done on purpose to annoy the chinese population (this was a long time ago), but I think it's just a coincidence, if anything they were trying to provide a replacement that was just as easy to remember.
Used to eat Dim Sum every month with my brothers and cousins back in highschool when we had early release. Between the five or six of us that usually went we would spend around $100 - $120 and eat until we were all to stuffed to move. I actually thought it was pretty good value. I mean we'd eat so much that we'd be worthless for the rest of the day, all of us would get home and just lay out on the couch and that was it, don't ask us to do shit cause we aint movin for nothing.
That can work against you, though. See next section. Very much agree with this, but once I went to Dim Sum with a Chinese friend, and was trying to impress upon him that in spite of my gringo appearance, I was down with the food style (which I am). He was likewise trying to impress upon me that no westerner can be as aware. Long story short, we essentially each bragged that we ate everything, even the chicken feet, which of course led to the order, both of us eating them, proclaiming how great they were, then saying we'd order more if we weren't so stuffed. Yeah, turns out he doesn't like them either. Anyway, on the question, I disagree. I usually find Dim Sum to be a pretty good deal, but I don't understand what this splitting the order is about. A dish of three dumplings is a serving for one, IMO.
I would not really complain about having to feed four people at a restaurant for at most $12. It doesn't sound like much of a rip-off, even for breakfast.
"Okay, NOT complaining people, I'm just sayin'....Peter seems to always be the guy eating the odd shrimp ball from everyon elses orders, and Mark.... Mark, how many tea refills is that now....four? Look, I don't want to wear out our welcome here. I plan on us coming back here again many times. Well, maybe not all of us...."
My mom loved them, but I was never able to muster up the courage to eat those brown-looking...things. And they were at EVERY breakfast buffet in EVERY hotel in China!
Can't be true; all the original area codes and the first 1 or 2 generations of additional area codes all had a 1 or a 0 as the middle digit. That's why it used to be that you didn't have to dial 1 before the area code when calling long-distance. Dim sum CAN be worth the price. I found a very good place on Folsom near 3rd street in San Francisco, not exactly the cheapest city in the world, and for 4 people, getting 11 dishes (most of which came in 4's, though not the really yummy stuff like BBQ pork buns), it was only $12.25 per person including tip. So yeah, it can be worth it. Just gotta find the right place.
Holy shit! Dim sum is EXPENSIVE where you are. There's a dim sum joint that I go to where the MOST expensive item is $3.50.
I had Dim Sum once. Why can't the Chinese make a decent meal? No, seriously. They should take some cooking lessons from the Thai.
Depends what you had. Peking style is delicious. Full of spices and savory dishes. What you probably had was that Cantonese shit. Vancouver has a mixture of both, but it's more dominated by Cantonese style, which is why my parents never liked eating Chinese food in Vancouver. In Calgary, we had more mainland immigrants settle here, which means more Peking style food. If you live in an area where there was a huge influx of Cantonese for whatever reason, then you're screwed. Ask the Chinese people what dialect they mainly speak. If they say Mandarin, then you just haven't found a good restaurant. If they say Cantonese, you'll now know why your Chinese food sucks.
