Dim Sum Explorations

Tricia Vuong
Aug 9, 2017 · 5 min read

The droning vibrations of my cell phone alarm woke me up at 10:30 on a bright Sunday morning. I climbed out of my warm, cozy bed and headed toward the bathroom so I could begin my day. I was preparing to meet Drew in Chinatown at our usual dim sum spot, Sunshine 27. I left my dorm and hopped on the six train to the stop at Canal. I exited into the bustling streets filled with yelling merchants as ambiguous scents entered my nose when I had passed the gaping fish markets. I briskly trotted down Canal Street careful not to bump into the masses of people that clogged the sidewalks. The voices of broken Cantonese conversations passed me as I quickly dodged my way through Chinatown, already a bit late to meet Drew. Finally, I reached the end of Canal Street and turned right onto Bowery where Sunshine 27 is. I opened the large glass doors, careful not to hit the mass of people waiting to be seated.

My mom and dad were both born in Vietnam but my mom was of Chinese descent. At a young age, I had learned mostly Cantonese and spoke mainly that and English around the house. When my family moved to Ohio I lost most of my skills speaking Cantonese but what I do still remember, is the Chinese food that we ate. Memories of eating dim sum with my mom and sister at the Chinatown in Cleveland is what I remember most. It is a series of dishes that I have loved since I was a kid and continue to love today.

When my family moved to California, we lived in an area that was predominantly Vietnamese, and sure enough I found myself eating dim sum once again. This time, the women pushing the carts spoke Vietnamese instead of the Cantonese I was used to in Cleveland. In California, my friends loved dim sum as well and we would all go together. I found it interesting that this Chinese dish had such a big impact in the Vietnamese community as well.

Drew was also from a suburb of Cleveland and remembers taking trips to Chinatown to get his own dim sum fix. He had spent a couple years studying in Beijing during high school where he became fluent in Mandarin and fell in love with the Chinese culture. We had met last semester in our “Urbanizing Asia” course where we both clicked over our connection for Chinese food, specifically dim sum. I had finally found a friend in the city who could appreciate and understand the meaning of dim sum. So with that, the two of us made it a ritual to catch up over some dim sum every once in awhile.

When I opened the glass doors I spotted Drew immediately as he was one of the only caucasians in the sea of Chinese people. Drew had a stub of paper with the numbers two, zero scratched on and the host had just yelled the number nine in both Chinese and a broken English. We greeted each other and caught up about our winter breaks as we waited to be seated. The number twenty was finally called and another host led us to the back of the room where there were two empty seats. The two empty seats were a part of a large table meant for eight so the two of us were placed with six members of a Chinese family. The murmurs of Cantonese combined with their staring made the situation very interesting.

I poured us both some tea into small tea cups and we waited for the women with carts to pass by. There was a “dessert” cart that past us first that carried an assortment for pastries. All the plates looked delicious but we weren’t craving dessert just yet. We flagged down the ladies pushing the siu mai and har gau carts, the two most popular dishes. Siu mai is a dumpling filled with pork, Chinese black mushroom, green onion and ginger with seasonings of Chinese rice wine. The dumplings are also garnished off with an orange dot usually made of crab roe or a carrot. Har gau is a dumpling filled with shrimp encased by a thin almost translucent rice paper in a pleated shape.

The assortment of various dumplings and small plates were arranged around the table. Drew and I began eating the familiar dishes and continued to catch up on conversation in between flagging down some carts. The loud noises, clinking plates, and chatter of foreign languages brought back a sense of familiarity. Here, Cantonese was spoken so I used my basic language skills to order us water and ask what was in the dishes. At this dim sum restaurant at home, the traditional experience of sitting at large family-style tables did not exist. I was used to sitting at a table just for two whereas here, we were added onto a larger table with an already existing Chinese family. I was also used to eating my dishes with soy sauce or red vinegar that were usually already placed on the dining tables. Here, there were no signs of soy sauce on the tables and no signs of people around us eating their dishes with soy sauce.

Once we were finished with our meal we got up and paid our tab at the front counter. The total came out to be about ten dollars per person, an amazing deal and one of the other reasons why dim sum is so great. We exited the restaurant and entered the busy streets of Chinatown once again, this time toward Little Italy. We were craving dessert and thought a cannoli would be the perfect way to top off our food adventure.

I think it is so fascinating how Chinatown and Little Italy are right next to each other in Manhattan. One second we are eating dim sum and dumplings on Canal and the next we are eating a cannoli on Mulberry. It wasn’t until later that evening that I had realized how our dim sum experience is one of a kind, but brings us both back to a familiar place.

The siu mai and har gau tasted the same to me here in New York City’s Chinatown as it did back home in Fountain Valley, California, and even Cleveland’s Chinatown. My experiences of dim sum have varied from place to place but they have all become an important element in every place that I have lived. This ritualistic meet up in Chinatown allowed us both to bond and socialize as friends but to me, this meal meant more than just eating a tasty Chinese dish, it was a piece of home.

Written in 2015 by Tricia Vuong.

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