Dim Sum

At lunch time, black paper mats and red napkins are set over the mahogany tables. At dinner, ecru linens lend a dressed-up air. At either meal, the Zen-like ambiance of the Red Pearl is relaxing and, as every good restaurant should be, conducive to a pleasant eating experience. The 200-seat restaurant on Lake Kittamaqundi, in Columbia's Town Center, is just over a year old and quietly earning a reputation for creative, well-prepared classic and more contemporary Chinese cuisine.

At lunch time, black paper mats and red napkins are set over the mahogany tables. At dinner, ecru linens lend a dressed-up air. At either meal, the Zen-like ambiance of the Red Pearl is relaxing and, as every good restaurant should be, conducive to a pleasant eating experience. The 200-seat restaurant on Lake Kittamaqundi, in Columbia's Town Center, is just over a year old and quietly earning a reputation for creative, well-prepared classic and more contemporary Chinese cuisine.

Fans of Joe's Peking Duck House at 323 Park Ave. (and I'm one of them) were crushed when it closed because of fire last year, but now it's reopened bigger and better than before - at least judging by the name, which is now Joe's Dim Sum Palace. You can get dim sum, those tasty tidbits that serve as a nibble or a full meal, 10 a.m.-10 p.m. seven days a week. The restaurant's offerings aren't limited to dim sum, though. Peking duck is still a specialty, and a full menu is available. "We serve the Chinese community so we have real Chinese food," says assistant manager Eric Yan. "But we also have American Chinese."

Red Pearl 10215 Wincopin Circle Columbia 410-715-6530 www.redpearlrestaurant.com Located along Columbia's downtown lakefront, this Chinese restaurant serves Sichuan, dim sum, Cantonese and Mandarin. Owner David Wong, whose family also operates Rockville's Far East restaurant and Potomac's Jade Billows, offers dim sum daily from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., including pushcart service on weekends and holidays. Event hosting is available. Yama Sushi 4725-G Dorsey Hall Dr. Ellicott City 410-997-3688 yamasushimd.com May and Kenny Chen really  spruced up the ambience at this former card shop in the Dorsey's Search Village Center with inventive lighting and a crystal beaded curtain separating the sushi bar from the dining area.

Downtown Baltimore has a new Chinese restaurant, Joe's Peking Duck House (323 Park Ave.), which I've heard good things about. The specialty (no surprise here) is Peking duck, along with roast pig and dim sum any time of day. It's open for lunch and dinner seven days a week, and entrees range from $6 for a vegetarian dish to $30 for shark's fin and abalone -- with many, many choices in between. The Peking Duck House doesn't have a liquor license, so BYOB.Starry Nights debuts"It used to be a chicken-finger-type deal," says manager John Combolo, explaining what kind of place Starry Nights (12800 Frederick Road, West Friendship)

Grand Palace Restaurant on Ritchie Highway in Brooklyn Park on a Sunday morning feels like bustling Hong Kong.My companion and I walked in on a recent Sunday looking for good dim sum -- a Hong Kong-style Chinese brunch which translates literally as "a little bit of heart."The restaurant's lack of windows, dim lighting plus the small disco ball that hangs from the ceiling gave the place a slightly sleazy feel. ("Sort of like you're eating in a subway station," my friend noted.)But the place was packed with Asian families, many of whom knew each other and exchanged greetings.

Chinese New Year, which falls on Jan. 31, is China's biggest holiday -- and an ideal time to discover the ease with which dim sum can be prepared at home.Loosely translated as "heart's delight," dim sum is an array of appetizer-sized morsels, from meat-filled dumplings to sweet buns, offered on trays to diners, who select the ones that "delight their heart."In southern China, teahouses have served dim sum since the 10th century. The ancient tradition probably grew out of holiday feasting.

The cart comes around. The lid is lifted off a dish, and inside are sticklike rows of ... something ... under a shiny brown sauce. Phoenix feet, we are told. Um, no thanks. But the fried shrimp cake looks good. We point. A portion is placed on our table, a mark is scribbled on a sheet of paper, and the cart is gone. A few minutes later, another cart is rolled toward our table. This one is loaded with sweets - round steamed buns with mango inside, little custard tarts, and balls of dough rolled in sesame seeds.

It was a bold move on Jesse Wong's part. The restaurants that have succeeded in Columbia have usually been chains -- places with food that appeals to a broad customer base, the lowest-common-denominator approach to the restaurant business. So what does Wong, the owner of the pan-Asian Asean Bistro, do for an encore? He opens a new Chinese restaurant on Lake Kittamaqundi that has dishes like frog meat with X.O. sauce, pig's intestine and sour cabbage, and Chinese chives sauteed with pork blood.

Walk into Brooklyn Park's Grand Palace on a weekend morning and you may think you've stumbled into a little bit of Hong Kong."SHIU MAI! HA GOW!" the waitress cries in Cantonese as she snakes her steaming aluminum cart between tables, slowing just enough to give patrons a peek at the pork and shrimp dumplings.The chattering, largely Asian crowd knows the ritual of the movable feast of dim sum: they point, they get, they eat. And the cart moves on.Translated as a "little bit of heart," dim sum is to the Cantonese what teatime is to the English.

What's your favorite city in the U.S. to visit? If you picked San Francisco, you'd be in line with Conde Nast Traveler readers who voted it the No. 1 U.S. city in the 2009 Readers' Choice Awards featured in this month's issue. Criteria included atmosphere, culture, friendliness, lodging, restaurants and shopping. San Francisco fared especially well in - you guessed it - restaurants. But the city boasts many lures, and they are apparently consistent. This is the 17th consecutive year that San Francisco has won this category in the annual survey.

There have been many Chinese restaurants at this address on the stretch of Park Avenue often referred to as Chinatown by longtime Baltimore residents. The most recent before ZhongShan was the Chinatown Cafe, which was loved for the authentic feeling that it created, at least in part, by serving parts of animals that Americans don't consider food. These things - feet, unidentifiable organs - were on the alternate Cantonese menu, which you had to request. It was all great fun, but then one day, the Chinatown Cafe wasn't there anymore, and the place was empty for a long time.

Kitty Chin's fingers dance delicately across the photos carefully arranged on cardboard displays, lingering lightly on one, long enough to tell its story, before waltzing off to the next. Here's her husband, Calvin Chin, surrounded by University of Baltimore students from Xiamen, China. Here he is at the Johns Hopkins University with a young man from Shanghai and, farther down, he poses with the man's parents. And there, at a place of honor at the top, is their wedding photo, the youthful couple captured in black and white, he in a tux, and she in satin.

The cart comes around. The lid is lifted off a dish, and inside are sticklike rows of ... something ... under a shiny brown sauce. Phoenix feet, we are told. Um, no thanks. But the fried shrimp cake looks good. We point. A portion is placed on our table, a mark is scribbled on a sheet of paper, and the cart is gone. A few minutes later, another cart is rolled toward our table. This one is loaded with sweets - round steamed buns with mango inside, little custard tarts, and balls of dough rolled in sesame seeds.

Over the past year, Howard County's thriving restaurant scene grew even more diverse with the addition of a sophisticated vegetarian restaurant, a dim sum palace and two Ellicott City brick-oven pizza parlors. Great Sage (5809 Clarksville Square Drive, Clarksville, 410-535-9400), which opened in June, is a vegetarian restaurant serving flavorful, imaginative food in an elegant environment. The menu is coded so diners can tell if the meal is vegan, soy-free or gluten-free. Entrees - which include a Tuscan stack of polenta, spinach and roasted vegetables, and a Thai dish with the rich flavors of lime and coconut milk - are about flavor as much as health.

It was a bold move on Jesse Wong's part. The restaurants that have succeeded in Columbia have usually been chains -- places with food that appeals to a broad customer base, the lowest-common-denominator approach to the restaurant business. So what does Wong, the owner of the pan-Asian Asean Bistro, do for an encore? He opens a new Chinese restaurant on Lake Kittamaqundi that has dishes like frog meat with X.O. sauce, pig's intestine and sour cabbage, and Chinese chives sauteed with pork blood.

I don't know if it was an organized campaign or not, but suddenly I was hearing it from all sides: The Dragon House in Owings Mills has fabulous dim sum. The dim sum chef, a master, had been brought from Hong Kong; but if dim sum business didn't pick up soon, they would have to let him go. "Please try to find time to review this undiscovered treasure," one reader wrote, "So that we may continue to enjoy it."For those of you who haven't had the pleasure yet, dim sum are Chinese dumplings, finger foods and pastries traditionally served tea parlors.

Red Pearl 10215 Wincopin Circle Columbia 410-715-6530 www.redpearlrestaurant.com Located along Columbia's downtown lakefront, this Chinese restaurant serves Sichuan, dim sum, Cantonese and Mandarin. Owner David Wong, whose family also operates Rockville's Far East restaurant and Potomac's Jade Billows, offers dim sum daily from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., including pushcart service on weekends and holidays. Event hosting is available. Yama Sushi 4725-G Dorsey Hall Dr. Ellicott City 410-997-3688 yamasushimd.com May and Kenny Chen really  spruced up the ambience at this former card shop in the Dorsey's Search Village Center with inventive lighting and a crystal beaded curtain separating the sushi bar from the dining area.

A few weeks ago, an acquaintance asked me if I knew a good place for dim sum. At the time, I had to admit I didn't. In fact, I didn't know of a single place in the Baltimore area that served it. Dim sum - basically Cantonese-style noshes that can range from green bean sheet rolls to steamed snail - is not offered at the average strip-mall Chinese takeout. But now I know that an excellent assortment is served at Chinatown Cafe. The 2-year-old restaurant, helmed by Joann and Wuen Cheung Wu, attracts a multi-ethnic crowd despite its so-so Park Avenue location.