What is the first thing you notice about the Chinese word “dim sum”? If you speak even just a bit of Mandarin Chinese, it would probably be: the word is not in Mandarin. The word “dim sum” is in Cantonese, as is the food itself; specific to the Cantonese cuisine and usually found only in Guangdong (AKA “Canton”) province.

Contrary to common belief, dim sum is not a dish but rather a type of meal, comprised of many different dishes. In the west we sometimes mistakenly attribute the word dimsum to other Chinese foods such as “jiaozi” (饺子), “baozi“(包子), or any other sort of dumplings. In fact, dim sum can be steamed or fried, solid or liquid, sweet or sour or spicy, and so on:

As you can see from the pictures, a main feature of dim sum is the size - a dim sum meal is made up of many small dishes. There are no specific requirements as to the actual content of these dishes, although the Cantonese kitchen has many “famous” dishes which tend to appear in most restaurants. Some examples with mouth-watering pictures can be viewed here.

When entering a Cantonese restaurant which serves dim sum, often the first question you will be asked on entrance is: “do you want to eat food or drink tea?”. This question is confusing and misleading even for non-Cantonese Chinese. Eat or drink? Why can’t I have both? The answer is that “drink tea” in this context means have a dim sum meal, while “eat food” means have a regular meal. This gives an immediate clue as to the nature of a dim sum meal, as tea is the central component around which the rest of the meal revolves.

The first question asked by the waiter, after you are seated, would be: “what type of tea would you like to drink?”. Tea is not an option in this sort of meal, it is a must, although prices of different teas can vary greatly. After tea is brought to the table, you start ordering dishes. Dishes in a dim sum meal are priced in a peculiar way: instead every dish having a specific price, they are separated into categories: “small”, “medium”, “big”, “extra”, “special” and so on- usually 5-6 categories. Each category has a price, and each dish will belong to one category (and at the end of the meal will be priced accordingly). The customer will be assigned a tally page divided into these categories; whenever a dish is delivered, the waiter stamps the appropriate category for the dish:

There are three common ways to order dishes:

• The “classic” way #1: the restaurant is divided into several sections: one for steamed dishes, one for fried dishes, one for porridges, one for sweet dishes, etc’. The customer walks around the sections, picking up any dish that catches his eye, while the waiters stamp his page appropriately:

• The “classic” way #2: Trollies move about between patrons, who pick from them whichever dishes they want. Like before, the tally page is stamped for each dish taken:

• The method which is usually used in the smaller restaurants - a special “ordering page” is provided, in which you mark which dishes you would like. This page is given to the waiters which later bring the dishes to the table:

Dim sum is usually not served all day; it is either served in the morning (called: “morning tea”), in the afternoon (”afternoon tea”) and sometimes at night (”night tea”). Morning tea and afternoon tea are more common. Night tea is served in fewer restaurants and usually starts relatively late - nine or ten at night. During the time in which dim sum is not served, most restaurants keep serving other “regular” dishes (usually cantonese dishes but not always).

Dim sum is a relaxed, slow meal. Because there are many small dishes, many flavors can be enjoyed even when only a few people are sharing the meal. Often morning clientèle will consist of retired people - they will order a couple of dishes with their tea, open a newspaper and idle away the morning. A common Cantonese aspiration is to open one’s own business,”become a boss” and have morning tea every day.