Yum Cha (and the art of eating Dim Sum)

Yum cha, dim sum, and other difficult but tasty Chinese words.

Yum cha, or its alter-ego in the UK - Dim Sum - is one of those things close to my heart. When I was younger, Saturdays would, if we had been very good, be a treat to yum cha down at the biggest Chinese place in town. During my formative university years, many a Sunday morning was spent nursing a hangover with copious amounts of hot tea, washing down delicious little steamed or fried morsels.

For clarification, Yum cha (飲茶) is the consumption of little snacks in the morning, with the consumption of tea. It means, literally, to drink tea. Dim Sum (點心) are the little snacks that one consumes at yum cha. These two words are both Cantonese transliterations, and indeed the practice of yum cha doesn't really exist in the North of China, where, 點心 (pronounced dian xin) would mean little pastries of various kinds, almost certainly sweet.

I've always been ambivalent about the rise in public awareness of yum cha in the west. It was certainly a demonstration that Chinese food could be refined in its presentation, fun in its consumption, and utterly delicious in its delicate execution. It was an exemplification that Chinese food needn't be overly sweet and greasy, messy, and served in a heaping mound over fried noodles.

On the flip side, too many Dim Sum joints opened up, serving sub-standard fast food and giving a delicious cuisine a undeserved bad name. Take the Ping Pong chain in London, for example. Yum cha is a time for people to sit over pots of tea, eat, drink, chat and relax for hours on a lazy weekend. Time to catch up on the gossip, and enjoy life. Sitting down at a formica table to have pre-made, pre-frozen, pre-cooked balls of rubber at the fastest rate you can, to be assured of low overheads and high turnover is the antithesis to this style of eating.

Another trend to have hit the metropolises is the ultra-hip, and ultra-expensive yum cha restaurant, finding a niche to extort a few extra pounds per dish out of fashionable diners and curious foodies. All credit to Yauatcha, that they do fantastic, innovative, and above all, approachable food. The problem I have is that it becomes 'fine dining', whatever that means, and loses its roots as a venue for family and friends to gather, relax, make some noise, and enjoy their food. If you walk into a restaurant in Hong Kong, the first thing that hits you is not the wall of steam, or the enticing fragrance of the dozens of competing dishes trolleyed around by staff, who are part waiter and part riot-police. It is usually the sheer noise of the place, reminiscent of underground gambling dens, and comparable, possibly, only to a beer hall in Munich during Oktoberfest.

Please take the time to try a few different establishments. To go to Yauatcha or - the other extreme - to go to Ping Pong, and then declare that you have sampled dim sum and not seen the point is somewhat akin to having walked into the nearest Angus Steak House, and decided that steak really isn't for you. There is so much more out there. Take a knowledgeable friend along, and go!

A short glossary of dim sum terms:

har gau (虾饺) - a small steamed dumpling with a wrapper made from wheat starch, wrapped around a prawn filling.

siu mai - a steamed open-faced dumpling made with a wheat wrapped around chopped pork and prawns, often bound by a small amount of starch.

feng zhao - chicken's feet, served in several different styles - usually fried until crispy then steamed with black beans and a bbq style sauce, usually resulting in a gooey gelatinous texture much prized in asian cuisine.

lo bak koh (萝卜糕) - AKA 'lo bah gao', or any variety of spellings, is a pan fried block made from grated white radish, starch and various savoury bits including dried shrimp, Chinese bacon, Chinese sausage, shiitaki mushrooms etc, which is then steamed to form a solid. Slices are then individually panfried.