Sunday the hubby and I joined Benita and Don Giller for dim sum at Chinatown, and spent amazingly little on a sumptuous and fun meal. Since it had been too many years since I “dim summed,” I performed a little pre-research, hoping to avoid culinary faux pas. What I found was pretty interesting (to me at least), so of course I had to blog about it. Dim sum, which literally translates to "touch the heart" or “point of the heart” (depending on the source), is a Cantonese term for a type of Chinese dish that involves small individual portions of food usually served in a small steamer basket or on a small plate. Dim sum is also inextricably tied to the experience of "yumcha" or the drinking of tea.
The drinking of tea is as important to dim sum as the food. Thank gaud I found this out in advance. I would have probably ordered a diet coke! It is also important to pour tea for others during dim sum before filling one's own cup, which I found to be a particularly civil and sweet ritual. And a custom unique to the Cantonese is to thank the person pouring the tea by tapping the bent index finger if you are single, or by tapping both the index and middle finger if you are married, both of which symbolize 'bowing' to them.
