It’s lunchtime at Yue Huang, the popular dim sum restaurant in Sacramento, and bamboo baskets are beginning to crowd the lazy Susan at the center of my ten-seater table. Within each is an arrangement of delectable baubles: glossy dumplings, pillowy buns, golden tarts, milky white rolls.
The kitchen team has been here since 7 a.m. handmaking each distinct kind of wrapping and the meat, curd and custard fillings that will go inside. The menu is a dizzying array of photos, spread over four front-and-back panels: 72 menu items in all.
Margaret Wong, the restaurant’s owner, explains, “Dim sum is just like tapas,” she says, a collection of small plates that come out in waves, best paired with a drink – Chinese tea in this case.
In Sacramento, where a large Chinese diaspora dates back to the dawn of the California railroad more than 150 years ago, Yue Huang has become an institution, with families packing the sprawling dining room every weekend.
The southern Chinese meal has, since its 10th century inception, been a way to eat well, cheaply. “It's people connecting. People like to be able to drink tea and talk politics and talk family,” Wong says.
As the baskets pile up, Wong and Jason Zisheng Li, the restaurant supervisor, share the ins and outs of the traditional feast.
What is dim sum?
The dim sum, or light meal, dates to the Sung Dynasty, when it was served as a refreshment at the roadside teahouses that dotted trade routes. Its role as a fixture of Cantonese culture arrived in the 19th century along the Pearl River in the city of Guangzhou.
There, Zisheng Li explains, manual laborers flocked to teahouses that specialized in the low-cost, small bites. Today, dim sum restaurants are found across the world, from Shanghai’s One-MICHELIN-Star Wu You Xian, which always draws lines, to gargantuan U.S. Chinatown establishments.
“In Chinese, dim is point, sum is heart. They point right to your heart: dim sum. It means to touch your heart,” Wong says.
What should I order?
Out of a supersized menu – divvied up into dishes that are steamed, baked, pan fried and deep fried – four orders stand out: ha kao shrimp dumplings, siu mai pork dumplings, char siu bao barbecue pork buns and noodles.
“If you're not good at these four items, you're not good,” Wong says.
At Yue Huang, the siu mai is wonderfully juicy and tender, made by splitting the pork meat from its fat, mashing them separately, then recombining the mixtures with spices. The pork buns are soft and fluffy, delicately wrapped and steamed so they split at the seams like the petals of a flower. Last Father’s Day, they sold 700.
What do I drink at dim sum?
“With dim sum, you have to pair tea,” Wong says. At our table, a glass kettle filled with a mild, soothing jasmine batch is poured frequently.
Yue Huang offers four kinds of tea imported from China, each with a different effect on its drinker. “Some tea might make people more spirited or more energetic. Some tea might cause people to get sleepy,” Zisheng Li says.
Black tea in particular makes for a good match with dim sum, helping to cut through some of the fattier elements of the dishes.
“Black tea helps to dry out the mouth, so for the next bite, there can be another clear flavor,” he says.
What about dessert?
Tarts and sweet buns are the headliners of the dim sum sweet offerings, with a special place reserved for pineapple flavors. Pineapple glazes and sugar crumbles even make their way into the savory section, at times on the tops of barbecue pork-filled buns.
For the dessert purists, a trio of Portuguese-style egg tarts arrives on a small plate, the flaky crust lined with a toasted yolk-yellow custard.
And then there’s the Black Gold, the newest item on Yue Huang’s menu, a new-meets-old mash-up of flavors and preparations. The bun, a perfect baked orb, is painted with a blaze of glittering gold across the top. With a bite, a cream of salted duck egg and sugar oozes out.
“It’s so pretty, right?” Wong says.
