The Tradition of Dimsum and Dining at Shunfeng Seafood Restaurant

Shrimp Siew Mai

My wife and I when to Sungfeng Seafood restaurant for dim sum with two other Malaysian couples. We had earlier arranged to meet in the restaurant located in the Parker Place Mall at approximately ten in the morning so to take advantage of their twenty percent discount if checks were paid before eleven in the morning. My wife and I actually arrived late at the restaurant but luckily our good friends had already selected and placed orders for the dim sum cuisines.

Fried Chicken Feet in Soy Sauce

Dim sum is really popular among the ethnic Chinese community in Vancouver or for that matter any where there are large population of ethnic Chinese. Considering the city of Richmond alone, with over eight hundred restaurants in the areas surrounding No. 3 Road, Alexander Road, and Cambie Street, at least half of which are predominantly Chinese restaurants serving different cuisine styles. And of these restaurants, one of every ten Chinese restaurants serves some kind of dim sum cuisine.

Yong Chow Seafood Fried Rice

This traditional Chinese past time or as we popularly called dim sum, is more of an opportunity for people to get together, have a good chat while sipping Chinese tea and enjoy some finger food. It is made even more popular in Hong Kong during the early colonial days for people of all ranks and level of society to congregate, talk about work, discuss politics, and even resolve business deals. Therefore, dim sum has become very synonymous to the Chinese culture not only the preparation of the dim sum cuisines. But also the significance of dim sum in the Chinese food cultural.

Durian Omochi

Dim sum has also become a significant part of the overall Chinese culture. The Chinese society has always placed the ability to provide food and shelter above any other aspect in life as something a noble person can do. Sharing food and comradeship are therefore the most significant. Anyone that has the ability to share food with his or her friends and relatives are deemed to be saviours and leaders. Therefore, when we dine together and share food with friends like sharing dim sum cuisines, it becomes a noble thing to do.

Giant Meal Balls

Therefore, no matter how expensive the dim sum meal could be, Chinese that can afford the meal will still come. I consider dim sum cuisines to be on the expensive side in comparison to many other Chinese cuisines. But the restaurants serving dim sum in Richmond and other parts of the metropolis still enjoy a large crowd of patrons on the weekends. Is it the taste and flavours of the dim sum cuisines or the opportunity to mingle that bring these people to dim sum restaurants? Remember, dim sum is all about sharing food.

Rice Porridge with Seafood Assortment

Of cause, some of these Chinese restaurants has really good dim sum cuisines. Some has really unique cuisines, like Sungfeng Seafood Restaurant has this rice porridge with assortment of seafood serve in a large bowl (meant for a few diners to share) which was actually awesome. But restaurants serving dim sum mostly serve the same dim sum cuisines like siew mai, pork buns (char siew bao), pork ribs in soy sauce, fried wuntun, dumplings, meat balls, carrot cakes, and egg tarts just to name a few. We also tried something unique at Sungfeng, which was the durian omochi cake. Really good stuff worthy of mentioning.