FRIENDLY DIM SUM

Do you know dim sum?

In the classic sense, dim sum is a Chinese tradition -- born in Canton and incubated in Hong Kong -- of small dishes of food brought to the dining table on carts in a nearly continuous procession. As is the case with tapas -- the little dishes of Spain -- those dining on dim sum pick and choose the foods they like and generally share them with each other.

And its popularity is growing in Las Vegas.

At Orchids Garden, 5485 W. Sahara Ave., owner Ken Wong had to extend the hours he serves dim sum, from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. to 10:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. daily.

"So many, many customers said, 'Hey, I can't come for lunch and I want dim sum,' " he said. "So I extended the business hours."

At Cathay House, 5300 Spring Mountain Road, manager Tommy Chan said while the dim sum hours remain 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., it's on the menu after 3 p.m. The increased popularity, he said, is "why we put a dim sum menu on at night, so they can order it just like an appetizer."

And Ping Pang Pong at the Gold Coast, 4000 W. Flamingo Road, recently started serving dim sum, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily.

John Zee, manager of Chang's Hong Kong Cuisine, 4670 S. Decatur Blvd., which serves dim sum from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily, said variety is a large part of the appeal. Conventional entrees, he said, tend to be a lot of one thing, but dim sum "is very interesting. Dim sum is all different things. It's almost the same thing as 50 different appetizers."

And it enables the customer to tailor-make a meal just for him- or herself.

"Dim sum is a lunch where you can gather around with friends while sipping tea for a long, lingering conversation," said Kevin Wu, owner of Ping Pang Pong. "Or for a business lunch, where you have a half-hour in and out. Both experiences will be enjoyable."

"The portion is pretty controllable," Wong said. "When you order you don't order a big dish; you can order a small portion.

"You can buy retail instead of wholesale," he quipped.

Wu said so far the response has been great.

"From my experience, the dim sum followers are concentrated in the American population in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and parts of Dallas, perhaps," he said. "So here we have folks from the East Coast and California. They're very sophisticated. They know what they like, they've had it before and they often make comparisons."

But he said people who aren't familiar with it are "eager to learn and anxious to understand more."

Las Vegas resident Edna Zhuo, a native of Shanghai, China, said dim sum -- which originally was "strictly Cantonese" -- wasn't traditionally a meal. The term, she said, means "to touch your heart," and it was more of a social hour with tea.

"Someone who is retired and has nothing to do, at dim sum time, he will go to the dim sum restaurant," Zhuo said. "Then he will take a table and order two or three dishes, and he will spend a day and he will meet a lot of friends and relatives and acquaintances. And then tomorrow he will go again. This is a regular thing for retired people."

And it also has a lot of appeal, she said, for "people like me: We have friends, we want to talk and get together but we don't want to have a real meal, so we go for dim sum."

Now that dim sum has become a substitute for lunch, "this is a little bit changed from the original."

"Over time, in Hong Kong and southern China, in the last three or four decades it evolved into full-meal service," Wu said.

The tradition spread geographically as well, Zhuo said.

"Beijing, because it's the capital, about in the '60s they started to have dim sum," she said. "I think now, with the transportation, wherever you go in China you can find one or two places, even in the remote areas. In Shanghai, Canton, Hong Kong, you have plenty of them."

Wu said another appeal of dim sum is that "the price points are attractive." They range from $2 to $5 per order at Ping Pang Pong. "With a group of friends you can experience a whole variety of things you might not have tried." (At the other local restaurants, prices range from about $1.85 to $4.15 per item, depending on the size of the item and the food involved.)

"The standard dim sum menu can vary from 30 to over 100 items," Wu said. "We're somewhere in between, with 60 to 80 items a day."

Items vary, he said, on a daily and/or seasonal basis.

"Right now, asparagus is in season," Wu said. "We will have asparagus in the lobster rolls." The menu also changes to reflect the major holidays of the Chinese lunar calendar, he said.

And Wu said local dim sum isn't particularly Americanized.

"I wouldn't be placing a tremendous difference in the variety offered" between his restaurant in Las Vegas and those in China and Hong Kong, he said. "We came from Hong Kong and we look to replicate the authentic nature."

Chan said Cathay House most days offers 40 to 50 different types of dim sum, prepared steamed, baked, fried or grilled. Popular items, he said, include rice cakes, dumplings, pot stickers, crab claws, egg rolls, barbecued buns, tofu and, for dessert, custard pie.

At Chang's, Zee said, about 50 types of dim sum are offered. "We also take care of the big hotels, any time they have special things going on. They call us and we cater it," he added.

Zhuo said that 30 years ago, dim sum was not available in Las Vegas.

"Cantonese people are crazy for dim sum," she said. "They missed dim sum so much they would drive to Los Angeles."

She came to Las Vegas about 27 years ago. She remembers a Szechuan restaurant on Sahara Avenue as the first local spot that served dim sum. But the popularity spread slowly at first, and now rapidly.