Some scholars suggest dim sum, a variety of Chinese small dishes usually enjoyed for brunch, originated in tea houses lining the ancient Silk Road starting more than a thousand years ago.
Others argue the tradition as we know it evolved in the latter part of the 19th century in and around the Chinese port city of Guangzhou.
You don’t need to have an opinion on dim sum’s origins to appreciate the small-serving concept. Or to know that San Antonio’s dim sum history is spotty.
One of the best dim sum places in recent memory existed briefly at the intersection of Evers Road and Loop 410. It offered myriad small plates from carts circulating the dining room. You simply flagged down a waiter and checked out the wares on the spot, lending a certain spontaneity to the experience.
These days, most ordering is from a menu. And thankfully, at least two Alamo City restaurants are giving it the care it deserves.
That menu is a plasticized one with pictures at Sichuan Garden, which recently added a modest selection to its otherwise spicy, Southwestern Chinese menu. The restaurant’s cattle tripe won the day with its appealing crunch and bright accents of ginger, scallion and green chili. Some other pillars of the dim sum pantheon performed almost as well, notably the tender and well-seasoned pork siomai, or shumai, a steamed dumpling presented in a prettily pleated package.
Though also deftly wrapped, the crystal shrimp dumplings lacked personality and were redeemed only by a dousing in chili sauce. With a robustly flavored filling, the barbecue pork in a sweetish, sticky bun held its own without need for additional sauce.
However, packaging was an issue with the xiaolongbao, a kind of soup dumpling. When pinched with chopsticks, it tended to deconstruct, spewing both ground pork filling and a modest amount of broth. Maybe use your fingers when nobody’s looking.
Sichuan Garden also offered other forms of bao, namely its steamed custard bun and taro bun, both presented as yeasty wrappers encasing sweetish filings. Of the two, the purple-tinted taro bun had the bigger personality. The custard may have been classic, but coupled with a bun that was more cottony than pillowy, it failed to rise above the ordinary.
If cattle tripe was the winner at Sichuan Garden, it was the least favorite among the dim sum sampled at Tasty Modern Asian Kitchen, a recently opened Cantonese restaurant with a slickly Vegas vibe. Here the dish is more gently labeled ginger and scallion beef tripe, but the main ingredient is more coarsely sliced, the ginger and scallion component less apparent.
Yet the next dish to randomly appear was both a surprise and a delight. The baked coffee barbecue buns that arrived in the auspicious quantity of three were lightly coated with a slightly sugary crackled skin atop a sturdier yet still tender wrapper, and are filled with chopped barbecued meat that’s at once punchy and perfumed. It’s unclear where the coffee enters the mix, but it’s also not critical. Just enjoy it while waiting for the next two or three plates to arrive.
In our case, that delivery included the Shanghai steamed soup dumplings. Presented in individual foil cups, they’re easier to eat without embarrassing incident than at Sichuan Garden, but both pork filling and broth proved unremarkable. The accompanying dark and brooding vinegar soy sauce is a winner, though.
A couple of the offerings at Tasty are studies in textural contrast more than fireworks of flavor. Resilient tofu skin clad the steamed beancurd rolls hiding a vegetable and pork filling within, and despite their subtlety, they’re worth attention. On the other hand, the crispy fried rice rolls didn’t even bother with a conventional filling. Here, a silky rice “noodle” wrapped a crispy cylinder — not “stick” as the menu indicates — of dough, and the play of opposites is frankly thrilling.
Stuffed eggplant with assorted toppings suggested an Italian dish gone awry. It would have been successful thanks to its filling and topping of ground pork and shrimp had it not been for the tough skins on the eggplant.
Lotus leaf sticky rice with chicken is all about the multi-layered wrapper, but it’s nevertheless fun to prize out the rice’s flavor components. Beef rice noodle rolls won for sheer beauty of execution despite a modest appearance.
If you want to consider pineapple lava buns as dessert, perhaps wait to order them toward the end of your dim sum death march. Pineapple may sound scary, but it’s merely a whisper in midst of the molten magnificence that fills a mildly sweet bun looking for all the world like a Mexican pan dulce. It proved a fitting transition back onto San Antonio streets.
Sichuan Garden
23247 NW Military Drive, (210) 265-5750, eatsichuan.net.
Dim sum hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. daily
Dim sum prices: $4-$6 per plate
Tasty Modern Asian Kitchen
9502 IH-10, (210) 888-1190, tastymodernasiankitchen.com.
Dim sum hours: 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m.-10:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday
Dim sum prices: $6.99 per plate
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This article appears in May 29 – Jun 11, 2025.