Eat sum dim sum!

Last night a colleague of mine sent out an email inviting everyone to join in for some dim sum at lunch today. I wasnt sure what dim sum was so I decided to wait and find out before tagging along. All I knew was it would probably be some Asian food since he was Asian and hello! dim sum - sounds asian! So this morning while I was talking to people around updating my knowledge on dim sum, I found out that it was Chinese food which is served in a unique way. There are servers who haul carts along the dining hall with multiple food plates on them and you have to pick and choose from what's available.

I'm not big on Chinese cuisine and time stands testimony to the fact that the only edible Chinese food is served in PF Chang's. Jokes apart, I really cannot eat Chinese anywhere else and that is mainly because the smell of food in most authentic Chinese restaurants is really over-powering for my olfactory senses. So much so that my eyes become smaller and I start squinting LOL Now it would be interesting to find if sushi would push me into Turning Japanese ;) Anyways, so I was assured by my colleagues that the place where we were going to served good food and that I should try it once if I've never done it before. No harm in trying I thought. I was just about to find out how wrong I was.

As I walked in to the restaurant I was engulfed by the smell of dumplings which once again reminded me why I hate to eat in a Chinese restaurant so much. But no hurried judgement, I told myself, I had been assured that the food here is really good. So we sat down and promptly an Asian female rushed to our table and served us tea. Well, almost. It was actually a greenish brown concoction which I was told was tea. Before I could think whether I wanted to drink it or not one server, and a couple others after her, hauled a big cart each next to our table. D who was our dim sum expert for the day ordered a few dishes. Being desi I was limited to eating seafood and chicken and apparently the best dishes these guys served were pork based. I was informed that the seafood wasnt bad either so I decided to go for the shrimp dishes.

No authentic Chinese restuarant has silverware on the table and this one was no different. Luckily I did not have to display my inefficient use of chopsticks as M quickly asked one server to get some forks. She too was not so good with, "juggling food on two sticks before quickly throwing it in your mouth." I'd rather not go on to describe how each dish tasted. To me they all looked the same and tasted the same because they all really were the same seafood dumplings or chicken dumplings albeit in various shapes. A few dumplings later I was really full, though not happy with my first dim sum experience. My happiness was further dented when the cheque split up to $15 per head.

No more dim sums for me, I promised, as we drove back to work. As we trudged back in from lunch, another colleague of mine who had wisely chosen to stay away asked the other people,"So did you pop Amit's dim sum cherry?" Everyone burst out laughing as I told him, "Yes. And it hurt really bad."