Dim Sum – the great cultural experience

Dim sum is a wonderful food – if you ever show up in San Francisco, I will invite you to go to dim sum – no, I will urge you strongly to go to dim sum with me.  Cristi had guests a week and a half ago, but they lamed out, so to satisfy my cravings I went with my mother.  Her favorite (and I don’t argue – she makes it look like I am not into food) is Gold Mountain at Broadway and Stockton – it’s our second favorite overall, after Restaurant Peony in Oakland’s Chinatown.

I put both into Yelp as I wrote this: some great laugh lines from people who said they were bad:

Service: I understand that we’re in the middle of China Town, but hardly ANYONE spoke English. We’d ask the wait staff what kind of filling was inside the dim sum and we’d get blank stares.

The wait for a Monday lunch for a table of 3……40 minutes!!!

Service is still atrocious.

That’s all completely true – both can be dirty, crowded, the servers (and patrons) don’t speak English, there’s a long line at the wrong times of day (11 AM – 1 PM).  But isn’t that half the fun?

When my mom and I were last there, a mother and daughter from Utah got there just as we were finishing up – they were the only white people we could see in the entire place, and the servers sat them next to us.  They were flummoxed by their surroundings – no idea how to order, what to do, and so on.

This is for them.

If you want, ask for water; ask for a fork.  Everyone pushing a cart piled high with baskets of food is yelling what the contents are, but in Cantonese.  They don’t speak English, but if you ask they know to lift the lid and let you look and how to say what animal(s) are inside the dumpling or whatever.  If it looks good, take it, but only if you don’t already have a dish in front of you.  Otherwise you suddenly end up with a million dishes all rapidly getting cold.

Other advice:

Do not be a strict vegetarian.  Hell, it’s best if you eat cows, pigs, vegetables, shrimp, and pieces of random edible plant, animal, and mineral things and unknown sauces.  Be unafraid to stand up for yourself.  Be okay with crowds, even if you cannot communicate with them.  Enjoy the experiences you’re having, even if they’re not ones that you are used to.  Take big bites.  Well – this list is a good list of life advice, wrapped in a steamed shrimp dumpling with green veggie bits.  If you see someone more confused than you are, such as a random couple from Utah, be helpful.

What other comparisons or pieces of advice apply equally to life and to a dim-sum restaurant?