Dim Sum is a Chinese dish that is eaten early in the day. It’s made up of a variety of small portions of food, including steamed and fried dumplings, usually taken with tea.
After a sudden urge to eat some on Sunday, we quickly found that there isn’t a lot of choice on the Isle of Wight.
We called around a few Chinese restaurants, but to no avail, so we put a call out to VB friends on Facebook and Twitter, who ended up giving us lots of good leads (Thank you!).
We didn’t manage to find anywhere that offered the wide range of dishes that make up Dim Sum, but there are a few – very few – that offer the Dim Sum dumplings.
To save you the same effort, here’s a summary of what we found.
Baan Thai, Cowes
Dawn Wilkinson put us on to Baan Thai in Cowes, so we popped along there to try it out.
This Thai restaurant has an intimate feel about it and those working there are friendly and welcoming.
There’s one Dim Sum dish on offer – pork dumplings. You get six for your £5.45 which arrive served in a dish of sweet sauce. There’s an additional small dish of soy sauce which had sliced chillies in it, giving quite a kick.
They tell us that the dumplings are made by them and they arrived with crab stick meat, thinly sliced carrot, fresh coriander and cress garnish on top.
They tasted good with hints of ginger and coriander really adding to the flavour. They were a little dry (microwaved heated?), but applying more soy sauce resolved this.
The Jasmine tea worked well with them (£1.70).
Score
7/10
Location
Baan Thai Restaurant
10 Bath Road, Cowes, Isle of Wight
(01983) 291 917
Other (yet untried) possibilities
Martin Welsford suggested …
Royal China, 16 High Street, Sandown PO36 8DE
(01983) 401 128
We called them this morning and they tell us they have one Dim Sum dish: Pork dumpling – £4.50
You get four dumplings and they said they’re Homemade.
Gemma Locans suggested …
Phileas Fogg Restaurant, High Street, Ventnor
(01983) 855 500
Looking at their menu, they offer …
Dim sum selection £3.95
Sesame toast, Chinese samosa, mini spring rolls and prawn crackers served with a soy and ginger lime dipping sauce
UPDATE 16:20 From the comments, midlander pointed out …
Siam Pearl, 59 High Street, Shanklin PO37 6JJ
(01983) 862 814
We’ve just called them and they confirmed the do Dim Sum. They serve steamed pork dumplings at £4.95 and you get 4-5 of them served.
A Big selection – off the Island
A very helpful person at Khrua Thai Orchid Restaurant, Seaview told us that finding a good selection of Dim Sum on the Island was very difficult.
He said the closest that he’d found was Kams Palace in Southampton.
We had a look at their Website and he’s not kidding – they’ve got a separate Dim Sum menu with loads of dishes on there which they serve daily between 12pm – 4.30pm.
Kams Palace
1 Bridge Road, Park Gate, Southampton SO31 7GD
(01489) 583328
More please !
If you hear of, or have tried more Dim Sum on the Island, do let us know …
