I grew up eating dim sum on busy weekends, when certain Chinese restaurants blocked out the equivalent of the brunch hour to serve dim sum from pushcarts carrying little round tins of steamed dumplings. For this reason, I always thought it an anomaly when restaurants served dim sum from an à la carte menu.
A visit to HK Dim Sum changed my mind. HK Dim Sum is a little hole-in-the-wall strip mall restaurant that only serves dim sum à la carte, all day, every day.
They’ve made it really simple to order what you want. Instead of seeing the item in a cart and pointing at it, they have a picture menu so you can point at the pictures to order the item you want. Immediately upon seating, I received a well-used picture menu with very small 1.5-square-inch pictures and a sushi-like list-type menu, where you mark the quantity you want next to each item.
I have to say that ordering à la carte takes a lot of the fun out of the dim sum experience, where visualization leads to instant gratification. But the piping hot dishes that came out not long after I ordered somewhat made up for the lack of pushcarts.
The deep-fried tofu stuffed with shrimp was a standout. Three very large pieces were crisped on the outside, molten hot and silken soft on the inside, and served with a slightly sweet sauce. For a tofu lover, it was perfection. Shrimp-stuffed gee cheung fun rice noodle cake was also very good. The noodle cake was slightly firmer than I’m used to, but that’s because it was served fresh (when it sits in a cart it can get a bit mushier).
I was not overly impressed with shiu mai pork dumplings, which were kind of small, nor the xiao long bao Shanghai style soup dumplings that did not have any soup in them, even if the flavors were right.
I still think the traditional pushcart dim sum is the best, but I’m glad I found HK Dim Sum. Even with the couple of misses I had, the food was good and reasonably priced (most dishes $2.50 to $4). The service was quick and friendly, and I’m glad to know that I don’t need to wait until the weekend to satisfy a dim sum craving.
HK DIM SUM, 9889 Bellaire Blvd. at Beltway 8, 713-777-7029