page_title: Dim sum
section_title: Restaurants
hierarchical_section_title: Dim sum / Restaurants
caption_attribution_description: English: HK zh:堅尼地城 Kennedy Town 北街 North Street in October 2019
context_page_description: Dim sum is a large range of small dishes that Cantonese people traditionally enjoy in restaurants for breakfast and for lunch. The city Guangzhou experienced an increase in commercial travel in the 10th Century and the travelers stopped at tea houses for frequent, small-portion meals with tea called yum cha, or "drink tea" meal. Yum cha includes two related concepts:
  一盅兩件, which is literally “one cup, two pieces.” This refers to the custom of serving teahouse customers two pieces of delicately made food items, savory or sweet, to complement their tea.
  點心, which is dim sum and literally “touch heart.” This is the term used to designate the small food items that accompanied the drinking of tea.
  Teahouse owners eventually added various snacks, called dim sum, and this practice of having tea with dim sum eventually evolved into modern yum cha. Cantonese dim sum culture developed rapidly during the latter half of the nineteenth century in Guangzhou. Cantonese dim sum was originally based on local foods. As dim sum continued to develop, chefs introduced influences and traditions from other regions of China and this was a start to the wide variety of dim sum.
context_section_description: Many Cantonese restaurants start serving dim sum as early as five in the morning, while more traditional restaurants typically serve dim sum until mid-afternoon.  It has become commonplace for restaurants to serve dim sum at dinner time and even to sell various dim sum items a la carte for take-out.
  Dim sum has a unique serving method. In dim sum restaurants or teahouses, servers offer dishes to customers from steam-heated carts. Diners often prefer tables nearest the kitchen since servers and carts pass by these tables first. Many restaurants place lazy susans on tables to help diners reach food and tea.
  Pricing of dishes at these types of restaurants may vary, but traditionally, the dishes are classified as "small", "medium", "large", "extra-large", or "special".  For example, a basket of dumplings may be considered a small dish, while a bowl of congee or plate of lo mai gai a large one.  Dishes are then priced by size. Servers record orders with a rubber stamp or ink pen onto a bill card that remains on the table. Servers in some restaurants use distinctive stamps to track sales statistics for each server. Menu items not typically considered dim sum fare, such as a plate of chow mein, are typically branded as "kitchen" dishes on menus and individually priced. When done eating, the customers simply call the servers over, and the bill is calculated based on the number of stamps or quantities marked in each priced section.
  Another way of pricing the food consumed uses the number and color of the dishes left on the patron's table as a guide, much like the method used in some Japanese conveyor belt sushi restaurants.  Some newer restaurants offer a "conveyor belt dim sum" format.
  Other Chinese restaurants may instead take orders from a pre-printed sheet of paper and serve à la carte, much like Spanish tapas restaurants, to provide fresh, cooked-to-order dim sum or due to real estate and resource constraints.
caption: Dim sum food shop in Hong Kong
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