Enjoying a Little Slice of Paradise

Traditional dim sum servers sang verses praising the little dishes they sold from their carts in teahouses all over Hong Kong. Today’s dim sum sellers are a little less whimsical, but their treats hold the same appeal as those of the peddlers of yesteryear.

“Dim sum” in Cantonese means “from the heart,” and everything associated with this ritual seems rooted in the soul. Usually enjoyed weekend mornings, the custom of dim sum dining, or yum cha in Chinese, involves endless pots of tea and a mind-boggling variety of sweet or savory pastries.

Customers are presented with steaming carts filled with fried dumplings, doughy buns stuffed with pork or bite-sized bundles of minced meat, vegetables and seafood. Diners are expected to point to the plates they want to eat and keep adding to the variety throughout the meal.

Beginners may be bewildered by the offerings and the noisy business of hailing down the waitresses for jellyfish or boiled beef tripe. But after a visit or two to one of Orange County’s many dim sum restaurants and teahouses, ordering dim sum will seem as easy.

Local favorite Seafood Paradise in Westminster fills up quickly on Sunday mornings. But customers don’t usually have to wait long for one of the big tables in this slightly timeworn red-and-pink dining room with a dragon motif.

Once diners are seated, a pot of tea is delivered and the carts arrive one by one, weaving among the tables. Waitresses holler out their specialties, but sometimes it’s hard to hear, either because of the noise level or because some of the words may be unfamiliar. Ask one of the people who wander around the room monitoring tables to show you a menu and prices.

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Dim sum is an inexpensive way to taste a variety of Chinese snacks. Seafood Paradise offers about 50 small plates, beginning at $1.60 each and reaching $6 for steamed jelly fish. Our party of five consumed about 30 dishes, pushing the bill to $62. We left stuffed, hauling away about six boxes of leftovers.

Some of the selections are exotic such as the shark’s fin dumpling or chicken feet with black bean sauce. Other choices are about as bland as baby food: rice noodles with shrimp, barbecue pork roll or Chinese leek dumpling. I may be biased because dim sum is one of my favorite meals, but I contend the carts have something for everyone. A picky eater in our party was happy with anything wrapped in a soft, spongy rice noodle. Egg rolls are a crunchy delight.

The rest of us hunkered down to roast duck, seafood siu mai (pronounced “shoe may”; they are little “bags” of minced shrimp, scallops or other seafood), red bean crispy buns, white turnip cakes and chicken with sticky rice. What’s not to like?

If you want to learn more about dim sum, take a few boxes home and, like dissect each one to see how they are made. You will find, as I did, layers of individually crafted sections, such as sticky rice mixed with minced leeks, that are then fried or steamed.

The chopped crab balls are formed around a tiny claw that sticks out of the top like an umbrella. Tofu can be topped with a garnish before cut into squares and fried.

Equally impressive are the seaweed fish roll, fried taro ball, stewed beef giblets, calamari, scallop dumplings and sweet rice buns.

At $1.60 a plate, even if you order a loser, it is not catastrophic.

Mango custard, sweet rice cakes and fried sesame seed rolls are some of the dessert-type snacks that can be eaten along with the meal.

Seafood Paradise, 8602 Westminster Blvd., Westminster. (714) 893-6066. Hours: Sunday-Thursday, 10 a.m.-9:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m.-10 p.m.