hungry hungry hippos. what would you say to me if i offered to take you out to lunch at a place that had these qualities: (1) unreliable service (2) an extremely noisy ambiance (3) 80% of the dishes are based on one ingredient (4) you might end up leaving the restaurant unsatiated. what would you say? you would say “fuck that, take me to mcdonalds and super size my happy meal” right? well, what if i said i was taking you to dim sum? would that make your perception of the upcoming meal change?

it’s a well known fact that i am not dim sum’s number one fan. i don’t get all the fuss over it. inevitably, whenever dim sum is suggested as a weekend destination, positive oohs and aahs immediately follow. “dim sum, let’s do that, i love dim sum!” love dim sum? what’s to love?

here are my “issues” with dim sum. one, it’s crowded, two it’s noisy. fine whatever, you’re heading to the local china town, these two issues are taken for granted. plus you toss all sanitary concerns out the window. you might turn your nose up at a b-rated hamburger restaurant but suddenly a d-rated chinese establishment seems delicious? take a close look at the aprons of the cart pushers around you next time. count how many stains and food particles are freshly ingrained on those pearly whites. whatever, the best chinese food is dirty, i’ll let this one slide.

how about the actual dim sum food itself? eighty percent of dim sum is pretty much shrimp enveloped by something fried or slippery; all blasted with soy sauce. i mean, unless you really like shrimp, does this sound all that appetizing to you? what’s the difference between shrimp fest at sizzler and dim sum? not much right? but i guess the food at dim sum must be good enough for most, so again, i'll let this complaint slide.

let’s turn the focus onto how dim sum actually works. little carts full of random food wander from table to table, oftentimes skipping your area entirely. half of your dim sum experience is spent looking around hoping that the lady with the shu mai will come around soon. and when she doesn’t show up, it’s perfectly acceptable. you’ll just keep on looking around the room and staring into little stacks of pots.

does this sound like fun? do you sit around at regular restaurants and hope/pray that your waiter will arrive with the dish you wanted? i doubt it. but somehow this is okay. the first few times you go to dim sum, the excitement of seeing what new foodstuffs are coming your way can be titilatting i guess. it's a bazarre for all five senses i'm sure. but after a lifetime spent looking for little ladies pushing that one special shu mai cart, it can get a little annoying.

by the time carts actually make it to your table and you’ve ordered all the food that you wanted, it’s been an hour and a half and you’ve eaten eight pieces of shrimp. yummy. dim sum is built around an entirely inefficient system of food distribution. there’s a reason menus and dedicated waiters are the norm at most restaurants. it works, it’s (ideally) efficient. and if it’s not efficient, you bitch at the manager or skimp on the tip like a college person. for some reason, there is no real outrage at the level of service you receive, or don’t receive, at dim sum.

i blame this casual acceptance of the inefficiency of dim sum on the “oriental factor.” dim sum is seen as a cultural experience first and foremost. one would have to be a bigoted racist to even ask “hey, why the hell is the food coming around so damn slow?” if i were a non-chinese person going to dim sum, i’d keep my damn mouth shut because i wouldn’t want to be seen as a defiler of centuries of chinese tradition. i’d be confused as to why i’m not getting any food, not to mention hungry, but i wouldn’t say a word.

it’s gonna take a chinese person to speak up about dim sum, and luckily, i am that chinese person. you think if denny’s started serving coffee and eggs in a dim sum manner that there wouldn’t be an uproar? but somehow a semi-mysterious and exotic culturally enriching experience is suddenly replacement for being fed on the regular? why is this? people get offended when they don’t get service within three minutes anywhere else but at dim sum it’s fine? blame it on orientalism i say.

beyond the gross inefficiencies that dim sum perpetrates, there are a few other things that upset me about the entire experience. like the “one piece that always sticks around” thing. because dim sum is served in tiny portions of three to four pieces, nobody wants to be the asshole who snags the last piece on a platter. so everyone just sort of lets that last piece sit around...and around...and around.

if you study your party’s faces, you can figure out who’s been eyeing what for the last thirty minutes. i personally prefer to be able to eat, and taste, what i want when i want it. i don’t want to have to wait until ten minutes before the end of the meal before people start divvying up the last pork ball or the last shrimp thingy. i want to just reach over and grab it when i want it. but i can’t. because that would be rude. and if you mistakenly grab the last whatever before you give sufficient time for someone else to grab it, you can’t even get more of that dish immediately because who knows when that particular item will come around again. you’re both rude and unthoughtful. it’s really a snowball effect, this inefficiency thing. it really fucks up the entire eating process.

ameer pointed out that he’s free from this “last piece” thing because he’s non-asian and really, he can pretend he doesn’t know any better. which is actually, a really good point. asian tradition dictates that you pretend to have some decorum and leave bite sized portions of all dishes around until the end, when the mom figure can assign who has to finish what. non-asians are exempt from this cultural edict apparently. go them.

basically, i’m saying that eating dim sum regresses us to a pack of hunters following fast moving animals hoping to get a kill. there’s a reason humans advanced towards farming and herding; so that we can get food when we want it instead of chasing stupid little carts around.

some people say that all these issues i have with dim sum would be solved if i went to a “good” dim sum place where all the carts came around like clockwork. and that i should eat dim sum only with friends since they don't care about the rudeness involved in grabbing the last piece(s). but here’s the thing, how many “good” dim sum places are there? i’ve had quite a bit of dim sum and i can’t even remember the last ultra efficient dim sum place i’ve been to. and since i tend to eat slow, and i tend to be around friends who eat fast, i end up just hoping for a burrito to fall out of the sky since clearly there will be no food left. and even if there were to be food left, how will twelve pieces of shrimp spread out over an hour and a half be satisfactory? don’t you realize mcdonalds gives you twenty pieces of chicken nuggets for a mere ten dollars? and you don’t have to go around rounding up the nuggets individually either.

this is turning out to be quite the long dim sum rant and for that i apologize. i feel very strongly about this topic and i could go on forever but i’ll spare you the rest of it. my point here is not that dim sum isn’t good, but that it shouldn’t be glorified to the point where people are salivating over it. what we should be glorifying and celebrating is buffets -- the ultimate statement in human food evolution. buffets, those are an efficient method of food distribution. very admirable. however, that’s another story for another time. the main point is, dim sum isn’t nearly as amazing as everyone makes it out to be.

my name is jon, i’m authentically chinese, and i’m against dim sum. sorry ancestors, i just couldn't hold it in any more. a thousand apologies.