Dim Sum matching?

[Jeremy_Holmes]

I tend to take along a Cru Beaujolais as a good allrounder. Works well with Siu Mai and various tripe dishes as well as the more elegant seafood dumplings.

[MChang]

Lunasia and Capital have the advantage of other locations also (capital is in Beverly Hills! Although I haven’t been to that one). I probably like capital the most because it’s very good, authentic, and a bit less expensive than places like sea Harbour while being less busy than elite; elite you need to be there at/when it opens on weekends. Lunasia is nice as it’s open at night with the same menu. Red was very good although I’ve only been there once; that’s where the guy was drinking the lafite.

[Mark_Golodetz]

I was in China when a delegation from Jerez came to try and popularize sherry and Chinese food. We ended up using a range of sherries depending on what we were eating. If I had to choose one it would be the Manzanilla.

[chetkern]

Dosed, low charged rose champagne works very well with steamed dim sum.

[Mark_Golodetz]

Can someone please give a dim summary

[Claus_Jeppesen]

Very often the traditions of the culture in question are the very best choices. Mature Kabinett/Spätlese or sometimes tea for Asian foods . Lagers with Mexican food. etc.

FIFY

[CFu]

Can someone please give a dim summary

You’ve been banned for awful pun

Lol

[MChang]

I find that line of reasoning intellectually lazy if kit insulting. So people should just drink corona or margaritas with Mexican food, and tea, or maybe baiju with Chinese food? Vodka only with russiN food, and wine pairings only with French food?

Yes dim sum is a diverse grouping of food types that isn’t particularly easy to characterize and as Charlie said it isn’t easy to necessarily pair one wine with every type of common dim sum dish, though I’d argue a richer champagne would do best.

That said, part of the hobby, IMO, is tackling difficult pairings and figuring out which ones do (and don’t) work. In the time I’ve spent in diverse dim sum places in hk/gd/Taiwan I’ve seen everything paired from Louis XIII to Bordeaux to Moscato. Many people drink tea but they drink various other beverages as well.

It was inevitable that the “don’t drink wine just drink beer/tea/whatever” posts would arrive, but at least we had a decent number of actually responsive and helpful posts first.

I find that people pointing out that not all foods, especially how non-European foods are served in the US, are good pairings for wine or require very careful menu selections to be very important and helpful. I don’t find it all helpful if someone just throws out “X with Y” when the choices are so diverse and call for very different decisions.

I’ve seen variations of this over many years. Many people trying to shoehorn wines where they do not really belong or roundly ignoring advice in order to just do a pairing cuz need to show off a cellar selection. Not everything has been created in the niche European traditions of grape x in terroir y = foods z.

Charlie made the point I would. When pairing with Asian foods it pays to focus on certain dishes. Trying to conclude wines from a certain region match foods from certain sorts of restaurants invariably leads to disappointment.

I found Alsatian Gewruz paired with good Peking Duck to be probably one of the best pairings I will have in this lifetime. But I don’t remember that wine working with all the other dishes we’d have at a pass the dish sort of feast at a Chinese restaurant. People should be told that instead of just having the last experience each reader has had thrown at them with no context.

Very often the traditions of the culture in question are the very best choices. Tea for Asian foods. Lagers with Mexican food. etc.

[lleichtman]

SB is my usual choice though we drink a lot of Sake with Dim Sum.

[Victor_Hong]

Can someone please give a dim summary

You’ve been banned for awful pun

Lol

My relatives have banned him from all future Christmas dinners.

[David_K_o_l_i_n]

I find that line of reasoning intellectually lazy if kit insulting. So people should just drink corona or margaritas with Mexican food, and tea, or maybe baiju with Chinese food? Vodka only with russiN food, and wine pairings only with French food?

I don’t find it intellectuallly lazy. Some things just arent worth the trouble, though.

The diversity of flavors in Dim Sum, together with the time of the day it is eaten (by me, at least), indicates tea as the ideal beverage. Although I can always drink baiju and have had a beer occassionally.

[David_Cooper]

We had a 2009 Zind Humbrecht Gerwurtztraminer with dim sum a few years ago and it was a very good match. At a few group dim sum dinners (@Dinesty they serve the same menu all day) showed most wines go well with most dishes. A young Barbaresco with Ancient fish was a definite loser though.

[P_Moy]

Of course, one drinks whatever one wishes at a dim sum restaurant. But there’s another perspective on drinking tea with dim sum. If you speak Cantonese or Mandarin, the first thing a server will ask as soon as you sit down is what tea you wish to drink. A good dim sum restaurant offers a wide variety of loose leaf teas, each of which has a different taste and medicinal effect. Puer, for example, cuts oily foods and promotes digestion, and juhua (chrysanthemum) cools heat in the body. Tea is savored when eating dim sum, just as wine is, and if you drink enough different teas with dim sum, you may develop an interesting perspective on the compatibility of tea with dim sum. Traditionally, the Chinese do not drink cold liquids with food because of the effect that cold has on slowing digestion. Tea, on the other hand, not only brings out the flavor in many dim sum but has the medicinal effect that most Chinese value. That’s been my experience. If you can, next time you go to a dim sum restaurant, go with a Chinese speaking person who can navigate the variety that is tea.

[CFu]

I find that line of reasoning intellectually lazy if kit insulting. So people should just drink corona or margaritas with Mexican food, and tea, or maybe baiju with Chinese food? Vodka only with russiN food, and wine pairings only with French food?

I don’t find it intellectuallly lazy. Some things just arent worth the trouble, though.

The diversity of flavors in Dim Sum, together with the time of the day it is eaten (by me, at least), indicates tea as the ideal beverage. Although I can always drink baiju and have had a beer occassionally.

i think it’s pretty lazy considering most dim sum places serve crap tea and not all of them give you a truly diverse amount of teas to choose from. Even when they do give you 6-8 choices, the quality isn’t high.

Now if you’re bringing your own tea leaves for them to boil that’s a different story.

[MChang]

While along with charlie’s most recent post I would agree that pairing artisan teas with dim sum could be good, I’ve never seen that option at the places I’ve eaten at in LA, SF, GD, HK or TW. Which dim sum places are you referring to?

Of course, one drinks whatever one wishes at a dim sum restaurant. But there’s another perspective on drinking tea with dim sum. If you speak Cantonese or Mandarin, the first thing a server will ask as soon as you sit down is what tea you wish to drink. A good dim sum restaurant offers a wide variety of loose leaf teas, each of which has a different taste and medicinal effect. Puer, for example, cuts oily foods and promotes digestion, and juhua (chrysanthemum) cools heat in the body. Tea is savored when eating dim sum, just as wine is, and if you drink enough different teas with dim sum, you may develop an interesting perspective on the compatibility of tea with dim sum. Traditionally, the Chinese do not drink cold liquids with food because of the effect that cold has on slowing digestion. Tea, on the other hand, not only brings out the flavor in many dim sum but has the medicinal effect that most Chinese value. That’s been my experience. If you can, next time you go to a dim sum restaurant, go with a Chinese speaking person who can navigate the variety that is tea.

[YLee]

I find that line of reasoning intellectually lazy if kit insulting. So people should just drink corona or margaritas with Mexican food, and tea, or maybe baiju with Chinese food? Vodka only with russiN food, and wine pairings only with French food?

Yes dim sum is a diverse grouping of food types that isn’t particularly easy to characterize and as Charlie said it isn’t easy to necessarily pair one wine with every type of common dim sum dish, though I’d argue a richer champagne would do best.

That said, part of the hobby, IMO, is tackling difficult pairings and figuring out which ones do (and don’t) work. In the time I’ve spent in diverse dim sum places in hk/gd/Taiwan I’ve seen everything paired from Louis XIII to Bordeaux to Moscato. Many people drink tea but they drink various other beverages as well.

It was inevitable that the “don’t drink wine just drink beer/tea/whatever” posts would arrive, but at least we had a decent number of actually responsive and helpful posts first.

I find that people pointing out that not all foods, especially how non-European foods are served in the US, are good pairings for wine or require very careful menu selections to be very important and helpful. I don’t find it all helpful if someone just throws out “X with Y” when the choices are so diverse and call for very different decisions.

I’ve seen variations of this over many years. Many people trying to shoehorn wines where they do not really belong or roundly ignoring advice in order to just do a pairing cuz need to show off a cellar selection. Not everything has been created in the niche European traditions of grape x in terroir y = foods z.

Charlie made the point I would. When pairing with Asian foods it pays to focus on certain dishes. Trying to conclude wines from a certain region match foods from certain sorts of restaurants invariably leads to disappointment.

I found Alsatian Gewruz paired with good Peking Duck to be probably one of the best pairings I will have in this lifetime. But I don’t remember that wine working with all the other dishes we’d have at a pass the dish sort of feast at a Chinese restaurant. People should be told that instead of just having the last experience each reader has had thrown at them with no context.

Very often the traditions of the culture in question are the very best choices. Tea for Asian foods. Lagers with Mexican food. etc.

I dont think he meant you MUST drink those. I think he meant those are the best pairing in general. Same goes for eating italian food. In general you would pair it with an Italian wine.

[David_K_o_l_i_n]

I find that line of reasoning intellectually lazy if kit insulting. So people should just drink corona or margaritas with Mexican food, and tea, or maybe baiju with Chinese food? Vodka only with russiN food, and wine pairings only with French food?

I don’t find it intellectuallly lazy. Some things just arent worth the trouble, though.

The diversity of flavors in Dim Sum, together with the time of the day it is eaten (by me, at least), indicates tea as the ideal beverage. Although I can always drink baiju and have had a beer occassionally.

i think it’s pretty lazy considering most dim sum places serve crap tea and not all of them give you a truly diverse amount of teas to choose from. Even when they do give you 6-8 choices, the quality isn’t high.

Now if you’re bringing your own tea leaves for them to boil that’s a different story.

Maybe so. Next time I’ll try their plum wine

I guess my point is that, for me, wine isn’t necessary for every dining experience and doesn’t always improve on the meal. For example, I can match Szechuan or Yucatecan cuisines with wine, but I’d rather have a Tsingtao or Tecate. YMMV

[P_Moy]

Royal Seafood and Golden Unicorn in NY Chinatown, Asian Jewels in Flushing, NY, and Ming Hin in Chicago Chinatown. I spent my summers as a youth in Hong Kong with my uncle, who was a cook. On his off days, he took me and my cousins to different dim sum restaurants, and it was in these places that he taught me about tea and tasting tea with food. It was an education that I will never forget.

[Mike_Grammer]

I find that line of reasoning intellectually lazy if kit insulting. So people should just drink corona or margaritas with Mexican food, and tea, or maybe baiju with Chinese food? Vodka only with russiN food, and wine pairings only with French food?

I don’t find it intellectuallly lazy. Some things just arent worth the trouble, though.

The diversity of flavors in Dim Sum, together with the time of the day it is eaten (by me, at least), indicates tea as the ideal beverage. Although I can always drink baiju and have had a beer occassionally.

i think it’s pretty lazy considering most dim sum places serve crap tea and not all of them give you a truly diverse amount of teas to choose from. Even when they do give you 6-8 choices, the quality isn’t high.

Now if you’re bringing your own tea leaves for them to boil that’s a different story.

That’s how my friend Dave and I roll up here, Charlie. He usually brings fantastic stuff that goes in hot water and a pot and is marvelous with our dim sum.

Fond memories of dining at Jing Fong with the NYC gang and, IIRC, Alsatian PG and Gewurtz, Prager Gruner and Condrieu all had some interesting things to say, Chris.

Mike

[Victor_Hong]

This entire thread is a pedantic tempest in a steam cart.