Dim sum

• 1. Introduction

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  Dim sum, written in Cantonese pronunciation, translates literally as "touch the heart." It is the name for a huge family of small Chinese dishes, traditionally eaten at brunch in restaurants with a pot of tea close at hand. Most of the dishes people now call dim sum belong to Cantonese cooking, though a few other Chinese cuisines have their own. Three questions run through this documentary. Where did such an odd name come from, and what did it first describe? How did light snacks for tea drinkers grow into a cuisine with its own branch of cookbooks? And what happens to a meal built on lingering and sharing when it leaves the teahouses of southern China for cities across the world?

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• 2. A Contested Name

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  A general, a battlefield and a gift of buns sit at the heart of one legend about the name. According to the story, the general wanted to thank his soldiers after their battles. He had civilians make buns and cakes and sent them to the front lines. The phrase for this gratitude, written 點點心意, was later shortened, and dim sum is the Cantonese pronunciation of the shortened form. Some references place the legend in the Eastern Jin dynasty, 317-420 AD. Other versions date it to the Southern Song dynasty.

  The earliest written use of the term appears in the Book of Tang, composed in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, 907-979. There the characters 點心 work as a verb, not a name for food. A woman says she has not finished dressing and is not ready for a proper meal, so the listener may treat himself to some small snacks. In that sense, to dim sum meant to barely fill your stomach. The original meaning of the term remains unclear and contested.

  The food historian Yan-kit So tied the dishes to a drink. Among Cantonese speakers, she observed, the invitation "Let's go yum cha," literally to drink tea, is understood to mean going to a restaurant for dim sum.

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• 3. Teahouse Beginnings

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  In the tenth century, the city of Canton, now called Guangzhou, saw a rise in commercial travel. Travelers filled its teahouses and ordered small meals with tea, a custom called yum cha. The custom has two related halves. The first is "one cup, two pieces," meaning that customers received two delicately made items, savory or sweet, to go with their tea. The second is dim sum itself, the name for the small foods that accompanied the drinking. Teahouse owners gradually added more of these snacks to their offerings.

  A tradition of refined snacks already existed. Dim sum belongs to a Chinese snack tradition that goes back to the Song dynasty. In those years, royal chefs created dishes such as minced pheasant, lark tongue, and desserts of steamed milk and bean paste.

  In the thirteenth century, the Mongols invaded China and the royal court fled to the south. The court brought a royal influence to the dim sum of Guangzhou. The city suited food and entertainment. It was a wealthy, large port with international visitors, a temperate climate, and a coastline that supplied fresh and tropical ingredients. Street vendors and teahouses both sold dim sum, and travelers picked their favorites from carts. Visitors chatted as they ate, and business people negotiated deals over the dishes.

  During the Ming dynasty, 1368-1644, a Tea and Horses Bureau was set up to monitor tea production and raise its quality. Better tea led to better teahouses. Guangzhou's teahouses also kept a rhythm called "three teas and two meals," which gave breakfast, afternoon and evening teas with dim sum alongside lunch and dinner.

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• 4. Borrowed Flavors

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  Over one thousand dim sum dishes come from Guangdong alone, and no other part of China comes close to that total. Some estimates say at least two thousand types exist across the country. Only about forty to fifty of them are commonly sold outside China. In most regional Chinese cooking, dim sum recipes are lumped together with other local snacks in the cookbooks. Cantonese dim sum is different, because it grew into a separate branch of cuisine.

  Its rapid growth came in the latter half of the nineteenth century in Guangzhou. At first, teahouse dining rooms were typically upstairs, and the early fare included steamed buns. The menu started from local foods, such as sweet roast pork called char siu and fresh rice noodles. Then chefs began borrowing.

  The borrowing followed centuries of migration. As people moved around China, they carried favorite recipes with them. Many Han Chinese moved south in search of warmer climates, settling in the Yangtze River Valley, the central highlands and the coastal southeast. Suzhou and Hangzhou left their mark on vegetarian soy skin rolls and pearl meatballs. Beijing desserts inspired squares flavored with red dates or wolfberries. Travelers from Central Asia along the Silk Road brought Muslim influences, visible in dishes such as pot stickers and steamed dumplings. Chefs also shrank big northern dishes, such as stuffed steamed buns, to fit the small-plate menu.

  By 1860, foreign influences had reached the kitchens of Guangdong. Ketchup, Worcestershire sauce and curry entered some savory dishes. Custard pies evolved into the miniature versions found in every teahouse. Indian samosas, mango puddings and Mexican conchas, the snow-topped buns, also left traces. The restaurants multiplied partly because home cooks found these dishes time-consuming and preferred to eat out and sample a wide range of baked, steamed, pan-fried, deep-fried and braised foods.

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• 5. Pavilions and Early Risers

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  In the 1920s, the finest place in Guangzhou to take tea was a tea pavilion with refined, expansive rooms. Its customers were wealthy, and the standards were high. On arriving, a guest inspected the tea leaves and checked the water temperature. Once satisfied, the guest received a pencil and a booklet listing the available dim sum. A waiter tore the order out of the booklet and passed it to the kitchen, which pan-fried, steamed, baked or deep-fried each dish on demand. Diners ate upstairs in privacy and comfort. Servers balanced the dishes along their arms or on trays as they climbed the stairs, and carts eventually carried the steamers and plates.

  People with average incomes enjoyed tea and dim sum too. Very early each morning, customers visited inexpensive restaurants for filled steamed buns and hot tea. By mid-morning, students and government employees ordered two or three kinds of dim sum and read their newspapers. Later in the morning, people who worked at small businesses came for breakfast and used the restaurant as a makeshift office.

  By the late 1930s, four dim sum chefs had become well known, with signs posted at the doors of their restaurants. Competition between teahouses was heavy, so new varieties appeared almost daily. Some were inspired by the tea pastries of Shanghai, Beijing and the Western world. Fusion creations included puddings, baked rolls, turnovers, custard tarts and Malay steamed cakes.

  Wrappers show how fast the craft moved. In the 1920s, the main types included raised dough for filled buns, wheat starch, egg dough for shao mai, crystal bun, crispy batter, sticky rice and boiled dumpling wrappers. By the 1930s, chefs had added puff pastry and Cantonese short pastry, among others. The total reached 23 types, prepared by pan-frying, deep-frying, steaming, baking and roasting.

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• 6. Plates and Stamps

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  A traditional brunch centers on steamed buns, such as cha siu bao, which holds barbecued pork. It also includes rice or wheat dumplings and rice noodle rolls filled with beef, chicken, pork, prawns or vegetarian options. The shrimp dumpling is steamed with a shrimp filling, and the xiaolongbao holds a rich broth inside. Turnip cake combines shredded white radish, dried shrimp, Chinese sausage and mushroom, then gets steamed, sliced and pan-fried. Lotus leaf rice wraps glutinous rice around egg yolk, dried scallop, mushroom and meat. The pineapple bun contains no pineapple at all, only a topping textured like pineapple skin. Egg tarts and sesame balls cover dessert, which can be ordered at any point, because the meal has no set sequence.

  Custom calls for ordering family-style. Each small dish holds three or four pieces, shared among everyone at the table, so people can try a wide variety.

  At traditional restaurants, servers push carts through the room, some of them steam-heated, so diners can choose by sight. Diners often prefer tables nearest the kitchen, since the carts pass those first. Many restaurants put a lazy susan on the table to help diners reach the food and tea.

  Pricing follows a ladder of dish sizes: small, medium, large, extra-large and special. A server marks each order on a bill card that stays on the table, using a rubber stamp or an ink pen. In some restaurants, servers carry distinctive stamps so that sales can be tracked for each server. Another way to settle the bill is to count the number and color of the plates left on the table. Many newer establishments have moved to menus, order cards or computer systems, which prepare dishes to order. That shift has been attributed to labor costs, efficiency, and the wish for consistent quality and temperature.

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• 7. Tea Etiquette

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  Tea is treated as just as important as the food. Jasmine tea, the most popular scented tea, is the one most often served at yum cha. Scented teas mix flowers such as gardenia, magnolia, osmanthus and rose with green, black or oolong leaves, and strict rules govern the proportion of flowers to tea. Chrysanthemum tea contains no tea leaves at all, only steeped flowers, and a common blend with pu-erh is called guk pou. Oolong teas come from the southeastern coast, and Tieguanyin, a premium variety with a delightful fragrance, originated in Fujian province. Green teas such as Dragon Well and Biluochun come from Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces.

  The service has its own rules. A server first asks which tea the table wants. Etiquette says the person closest to the teapot pours for the others, and sometimes a younger person serves an older one.

  The thank-you is silent. Those receiving tea tap their index and middle fingers twice on the table. A legend explains the gesture. An emperor, traveling in disguise among commoners, once poured tea for his servant in a public teahouse. The servant could not kowtow without exposing his master, so he improvised the finger tap. Over time it came to express gratitude for having tea poured by someone else.

  An empty pot has a signal too. Diners flip open the lid of a hinged metal teapot, or offset the cover of a ceramic one, and a server comes to refill it.

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• 8. Leaving Guangzhou

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  From 1927 to 1949, the Chinese Civil War pushed many dim sum chefs out of China, and they settled in Hong Kong. Their arrival brought further refinements and innovations there. Very large dim sum restaurants also appeared in major cities such as Hong Kong, San Francisco, Boston, Toronto and New York.

  Cantonese immigrants had already carried dim sum to the American west and east coasts in the nineteenth century. Some of the earliest American dim sum restaurants still operating opened in the 1920s in San Francisco and New York City. Early U.S. newspaper references appeared in the late 1930s, but broader public awareness did not arrive until the late 1980s.

  A chef from Hong Kong who moved to San Francisco noticed what had not crossed the ocean. American diners focused on the food, not the communal side. In Hong Kong, groups arrive around 10:00 AM, order small amounts, drink tea, read the newspaper and wait for friends and family. A visit can stretch from late morning well into the afternoon, and for some people in Hong Kong it is a daily routine and a way of life. U.S. restaurants responded with customized seasonings and novel dishes built on flavor and visual appeal.

  Today a reviewer notes that every U.S. state has at least one high-quality dim sum restaurant, helped by photos on social media. Chicago's Chinatown serves mainly traditional dishes, while fusion restaurants have opened outside Chinatown. Modern menus offer siu mai with pork, shrimp, scallop and caviar, Australian Wagyu beef puffs, and dumplings with gold leaf. One four-diamond Chinese restaurant in Miami Beach sells a prix-fixe yum cha menu with breakfast cocktails. Some chefs shape buns and dumplings like animals and fictional characters.

  Frozen and fresh dim sum now sit in grocery stores from Hong Kong to Canada. In Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, halal-certified versions that use chicken instead of pork are very popular.

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