I'm tempted to start referring to dim sum as "Chinese tapas." Heck, the two are fundamentally the same — small plates of food and all that. So far, though, most of the dining community (aside from SideBern's) has left centuries-old dim sum alone — even though it's become perfectly acceptable to co-opt a traditional Spanish cuisine for diminished portions of grouper bites and bruschetta.
Actually, dim sum might benefit from a tapas-like revitalization, despite the huge stylistic gulf between the two. Dim sum options are extremely limited in the Bay area, which makes a sort of sense considering that decent Chinese food of any kind is all but missing from our culinary landscape. Maybe if restaurants of all types and nationalities renamed their appetizer section "dim sum," we'd see new Chinese restaurants pop up to take advantage of a trend and give us the real deal. Heck, I'll gladly accept the cultural hijacking of an ancient cuisine if it means I can get a decent steamed bun in my neighborhood.
TC Choy's and Ho Ho Choy have dominated Tampa's dim sum scene for a decade, probably because they're just about the only restaurants around that serve the stuff. While they are very different places, these Chinese stalwarts compete for the same Top 10 spots on all the yearly popularity contests.
TC Choy's in SoHo is almost glitzy, with a gigantic open kitchen and modern design framing food that can be delicate and elegant. Two years ago, Ho Ho Choy made a big move from a longstanding location on N. Dale Mabry to a stripped-down strip mall in the USF area of Fletcher Avenue, with a décor that's barely better than your corner takeout joint. Customers dutifully followed, dragged by Ho Ho's punchy Chinese-American fare that occasionally flirts with rustic authenticity.
At Ho Ho, heavy balls of taro-root mash surround a tiny pocket of seasoned pork, the entire potato-like lump covered in a crumbly lattice of lacy, deeply browned fried starch. I want more pork to offset the unending sea of starch, but there is just enough of the mild filling to act like a tiny hidden treat.
Steamed buns are gooey and acceptable across the board, although the pork-stuffed version suffers from the same problem as the fried taro: too much starch, not enough tasty pig.
Whether steamed or fried, Ho Ho's shrimp potstickers are addictive. It's rare to taste the usually subdued shrimp, scallion and seasonings so strongly, especially when wrapped in a wonton blistered crisp by a quick fry. Steamed, the filling positively shines through the delicate, translucent wrapper.
When it comes to noodles, look to Ho Ho's simple, Honk Kong-style wonton soup. There, the tangle of golden threads is lubricated and flavored by rich chicken stock and dotted by wonderfully hearty pork dumplings and wilted bok choy. But when those same noodles are topped with seafood doused in a gelatinous sauce heavy on the corn starch, they range from stale to sopping on the same plate. (For a better noodly treat, venture to the regular menu for gooey rice noodles and chicken in salty black bean sauce.)
Ho Ho Choy's sesame balls are fried crisp and filled with strands of sweet dough and a sticky core of sugary bean paste. I'm always tempted to break a few open and stuff them with fragrant slices of roast pork, along with a dab of Ho Ho Choy's workmanlike hot-pepper garlic sauce.
The big problem with Ho Ho is that you order your dim sum from a laminated picture menu. At TC Choy's, where dim sum is only available during lunch, the experience is vastly more sensual and entertaining but not without its drawbacks. Servers wheel around carts laden with plates or steamer baskets — one devoted to dumplings and shumai, one for sweets, buns and rolls, one with broccoli and meats. During the week, it's a popular lunch choice; on Sunday's, it's flat-out packed.
The upside is that carts — and therefore food — hit the table almost immediately after you sit down. The bad news is that the food, except for a few steamed offerings, is rarely above room temperature, and the second visit from a cart might take a lot longer than you hope for. Nevertheless, there is compensatory joy and giddy surprise in being unaware of what the carts will bring, along with some appetizing satisfaction in the gratuitous display of pretty dishes.
Like the décor, the food here is a little more refined than its counterpart fare at Ho Ho. Taro dumplings are smaller and lighter in texture, with a better ratio of pork to mashed root. There is a pronounced sweetness to the dumplings, which reappears in sticky buns filled with bland barbecue, as well as gooey steamed buns stuffed with mildly tangy beef.
Shumai are packed with a typical blend of shrimp and scallions, while potstickers can come with anything from seafood laced with drab cilantro to shark fin, although the latter has none of the exceptional texture that makes that gelatinous flipper worth eating. It'll make you strong like bull, though.
Besides perfectly steamed Chinese broccoli drizzled with salty soy reduction, the "specials" cart is largely disappointing. Burned oil taints eggplant stuffed with shrimp, and the roasted meats — duck and chicken — are both tasty, but bony enough to make them a pain to disassemble and eat.
If it's a contest, then the food at TC Choy and Ho Ho Choy's is about even. You'll get more rustic oomph out of Ho Ho, more finesse out of TC Choy's, but the quality is essentially the same. At Ho Ho, everything comes out piping hot; at TC's you get the pomp and circumstance of traveling carts. TC's has a giant aquarium and beautiful woodwork; Ho Ho has the casual and comfortable service of a family-run business, with tasty and cheap take-out to boot.
Think of it as a simple personality test: You can tell a lot about people by their dim sum preferences.
Correction: In last week's review of Malio's, the restaurant Bernini of Ybor was incorrectly referred to as Bellini's.
This article appears in Jul 18-24, 2007.