Sampling Seafood Dim Sum in Millbrae (San Francisco suburb) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget
My family went out for dim sum with my friend, who was the Vice Consul of the Japanese Consulate in San Francisco at the time. (I had worked with her twenty years before finding sponsors for the first Japan Festival held in Chicago when I was a new graduate of the University of Chicago.)
We went to a restaurant in Millbrae, a town south of San
Francisco. Chinatown is cramped and more
of a tourist attraction now. Chinese
families, who have been in the Bay area for several generations, tend to move
to the suburbs. Millbrae is one of the
new enclaves of choice for Chinese-Americans.
Millbrae refers to an owner of the land, Darius Ogden Mills
who bought the land in the 1800s from the Sanchez family. “Brae” in the word Millbrae comes from the
Scottish word for “rolling hills” or “hill slope.” The hills are still there even if the
original inhabitants are not. Parking on
the hills requires hill parking, so your car will not roll downhill.
We had arrived before the appointed lunchtime and walked
down El Camino Real, main street, and looked at Chinese stores and
markets. There were many restaurants
along this street. The restaurant where
we went, Fook Yuen Seafood Restaurant, is now closed, but many of the dim sum
dishes that we ate can be found in other establishments around the world.
Dim sum literally means “touch the heart.” According to the book Southeast Asian Specialties: A Culinary Journey through Singapore,
Malaysia, and Indonesia edited by Rosalind Mowe, the Chinese Dowager
Empress Tzu Hzi (Chi) (1835 – 1908) had her cooks prepare something to
alleviate boredom with her food; dim sum are the result of her command.
Dim sum are dough pockets that are served for breakfast or
lunch with tea. They can be steamed and
served in bamboo baskets, fried in a wok, or baked. Traditional restaurants wheel carts around a
dim sum restaurant offering dim sum delicacies.
At Fook Yuen, they had carts as well as waiters bringing
baskets of steaming hot dim sum out of the kitchen. If you do not speak Chinese, you can point
and choose your dish. The waiter will
note what you have chosen on your bill with a chop, a Chinese ink marker with a
character on it. They will note how many
dim sum you have chosen and add the total up at the end of the meal for
payment.
A sample of some very popular steamed seafood dim sum
follows:
-Shao mai – pork, shrimp and mushroom dough pocket with crab
roe on top
-Xia jao – dumplings of fresh shrimp and bamboo shoots
-Jia Cai Jao – rice flour pastries filled with ground pork,
shrimp, water chestnuts, and chives
-Dai zhi shao mai – shrimp dumplings garnished with scallops
and crab roe
An example of a fried dim sum is zha yun tun, which is a
wonton with pork and shrimp filling. An
example of a baked dim sum is a dan ta, tartlets with egg custard.
During lunch we talked about the book my friend had written
on East Asian etiquette.
“Americans need your book in English,” I said.
“You write it,” she said.
“You could spend a lifetime just on the Japanese imperial
family’s language. I’m passing on that
idea,” I said.
We laughed, finished our meal, and enjoyed the bustling Hong
Kong atmosphere of the restaurant. It
was a great cultural outing for all of us.
By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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