For lunch today, Niki and I went with a couple of her friends from school to Tom’s Seafood Restaurant on the east side of Cleveland. It was my first real experience with dim sum, which are Chinese dumplings served either steamed or fried. It was all-you-can-eat, served buffet style — but instead of going up to a traditional American buffet (you know, with mysteriously wet plates and a sneeze guard), a group of servers wheeled carts filled with food to the tables.

I was really impressed with how different everything tasted. There were some things that were a little bit off the beaten path (even for me, and I really enjoy sashimi. For example, things like “chicken feet braised”, which, despite our best efforts, we couldn’t figure out how to eat. There were dumplings made with all kinds of meats, beans, and soy. They even had dim sum desserts, which were sort of like donut holes filled with custard. My favorite was probably the har gao, which are shrimp dumplings wrapped in rice flour.

The hardest part was trying to explain to the servers what type of food we wanted, because they didn’t speak too much English. (Although, I’m sure their English was better than my Chinese.) Niki’s friend Yoshie is Japanese, so they tried to speak Chinese to her but with no more success than any of the rest of us. :)

In the end, we all ate way too much. If you have the opportunity to try dim sum, expand your horizons!