Dim sum restaurants are usually very busy and quite noisy. In Hong Kong, dim sum is traditionally eaten for breakfast or brunch. Grandparents, parents, aunties, uncles and cousins all come together on a weekend morning - the Cantonese call this 'yum cha', which means 'drink tea', because the food is always served with endless pots of tea.
Some of the most famous dim sum dishes are: har gow (steamed prawn dumplings in thin, almost see-through skin), siu mai (open-topped pork dumplings), char siu bao (fluffy steamed buns filled with sweet barbecue pork), cheung fun (slippery rice noodle rolls), and lo mai gai (sticky rice wrapped in a lotus leaf).
The baskets are stacked high on trolleys that are wheeled around the restaurant. When a trolley passes, you point at what you want and the server lifts the lids so you can see inside. You order by pointing, not always by reading a menu.
Dim sum chefs train for years to master the skills. A perfect har gow dumpling has exactly 7 pleats on the outside. The pastry has to be thin enough to see through but strong enough not to break. It is a kind of edible art.