Out for Dim Sum

Suprisingly, we don't eat as much Chinese food as we had anticipated. One problem is that the majority of Chinese restaurants don't have their menus in English. And two, there is so much good Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese food in Hong Kong.

Our favorite Chinese food though is dim sum. The difficulty is that dim sum is only served for breakfast and lunch, so despite the fact that Hong Kong is famous for its dim sum, we've only had it six or seven times.

This past Saturday Julie and I were at an all-day marriage conference led by Gary Thomas author of Sacred Influence and Sacred Marriage. During the ninety minutes they gave us for lunch we went out for dim sum with friends and some friends of friends who were also attending the conference. One of our friends, Kaiser Lee is Chinese and grew up in Hong Kong and was able to order for the whole table. In a dim sum restaurant he food comes in waves and the server places the food on the lazy susan in the center of the table.

Traditionally, diners use their individual chopsticks to grab food from the communal dishes to bring to their individual plates. But after the SARS outbreak of 2003, service chopstick became de rigueur.

Dim Sum does't refer to a single dish, but rather a whole assortment of small dishes. Our favorite, pictured in the foregroudnd, is sticky buns with a small amount of barbecued pork in the center. Mmmm.