Dim sum at Sun Sui Wah in Vancouver.
Random dim sum notes.
Dim sum: little dishes of food, typically shared among several people. Standards include ha gow (shrimp dumpling), sui mai (pork dumpling), pork buns, steamed chicken buns, steamed spareribs, curried squid, spicy deep fried battered squid, sweet bean paste buns, rice porridge, marinated chicken feet, steamed beef meatballs, curried tripe, shrimp toast, grilled eggplant, spring rolls, sticky rice wraps, egg tarts.
And much more — pretty much anything the chefs want to make and think the customers will eat.
After being spoiled by the dim sum palaces of Calgary, dim sum in Victoria has been a little disappointing. I've encountered dim sim that was cold, lukewarm, overcooked, dried out and greasy.
My favourite Greater Victoria dim sum restaurant of the moment is Jade Fountain, 3366 Douglas St., Saanich. It does a high-volume business on weekends, and is pretty reliable with freshness, variety, and the all-important tastiness. The Galloping Goose Trail runs next to it, so bicycling over is an option.
The best dim sum I've had in the past couple of years was at Sun Sui Wah in Vancouver, at 3888 Main. It's a short walk from the Canada Lines' King Edward station and the Route 3 bus goes by the restaurant. The tiny baked pork buns were incredible. The bun was slightly sweet, moist, and melted in my mouth. I've never encountered a bun that good anywhere. Everything else was a notch or two above the ordinary — that much fresher and innovative. A dish of beef tendon was tender and full of flavour. Their steamed vegetarian dumplings were seasoned just right with spices; at other places, similar dumplings can be bland. The curried squid was delicate and tender — not overpowering and tough, as it can be sometimes.
Sun Sui Wah's dining room is huge and brightly lit by a giant skylight. That made the experience even more engaging. Even though the restaurant was packed, it didn't feel oppressively crowded because it was flooded with natural light.
The lineups to get in start early. People are milling about outside before the 10 a.m. opening time on Sundays. The dining room, seating several hundred, is packed before 11 a.m. and there's a long line at the door.
In Victoria, during peak dim sum times, such as late morning to early afternoon on a Sunday, the dim sum comes around on a heated cart, or a tray, and you pick what you want. Your selections are marked on a card, according to price. The card is tallied at the end of the meal, and you pay. At slower times, you might be invited to order from a menu.
At peak times — lunchtime Saturday and Sunday — you're apt to encounter a line. Etiquette varies by restaurant, but the typical procedure is to go to the front, get a number from the restaurant's traffic person, and get in line. The longest I've waited in Victoria is 40 minutes, when there were about 40 people ahead of us. I've seen angry words traded when someone has decided that someone else is butting in.
You can go at slower times, but there are tradeoffs. There won't be as much selection. The food won't be as fresh. You won't have same buzz that comes with a dining room packed with people.
The experience tends to be better when you go with a big group. You have the opportunity to order a greater variety of dishes and hear more gossip.
You can find dim sum at the B.C. Ferries breakfast buffet. I've encountered sui mai and ha gow. It was over-steamed and falling apart on one occasion, decent on another. Eating it with scrambled eggs and sausages didn't seem weird at all.
If you can't get to a restaurant, there's the frozen option. (And, of course, if you're ambitious, you can make it yourself from scratch.) Fairway Market grocery stores in Greater Victoria have a good selection of the standards in their freezer section, including sui mai, ha gow, meatballs, potstickers and sticky rice. Heating up the dim sum can be tricky. Steaming is best. You can do it with bamboo steamers, like the ones the restaurants use. Stack a few above boiling water. You will encounter sticking problems with some of the dumplings; address that by lining the steamer with lettuce leaves.
Here's a video at YouTube that takes you behind the scenes at a busy dim sum restaurant. (They make 25,000 to 30,000 dumplings a day.)
More on dim sum later. Many more dim sum tales to share.
