Dim Sum

Hong Kong has a rich culinary culture with all kinds of delicacies, among which dim sum is one of the must-eats. Dim sum refers to a kind of Chinese food that includes a variety of dishes and snacks. They are elaborately made and mouth watering, usually served in steaming bamboo baskets or small plates. Chinese people, especially Hong Kong and Cantonese people eat dim sum for breakfast or lunch, or sometimes with a cup of tea in the early afternoon.

Anyone who visits Hong Kong could not be completely satisfied without trying dim sum for this city has numerous restaurants catering to the people who regard eating dim sum as a custom while taking a break and drinking tea in the day till mid-afternoon. Most of the dim sum restaurants are like teahouses for people to enjoy a moment of respite and have pots and pots of tea. Eaters can order various dim sum dishes from a menu, but usually the servers will wheel the food around on a trolley so that people can taste whatever tickles their fancy all the time.

There are a wide variety of dim sum dishes in different restaurants in Hong Kong, but they usually are of several main types such as dumplings (shrimp dumplings, salt-water stuffed dumplings), bao (Cantonese barbecue pork buns), rolls (fried spring rolls, steamed rice noodle rolls), cakes (turnip cake, water chestnut cake) and sweets (egg tart, mango pudding, etc). Such delicious food is not only the locals' favorite but also fascinating to visitors from elsewhere. Usually two to four items of dim sum are contained in one basket and each basket costs about 20 to 40 HKD on average.