A dim sum parlour ought to always be crowded. Folks waiting patiently (or impatiently, more often than not) for a table to be available. Never their table for most restaurants wouldn’t imagine allowing reservations.
You come when you can, you arrive when you do – early, if the traffic deities are kind – and you try your luck.
You hope for the best.
And while you wait, you might stare daggers at those who have already gotten their golden seats or already tucking into their dim sum, basket upon basket of har gao and siu mai. Of phoenix claws and bowls of congee. Buns and rolls and tender dumplings.
But you probably wouldn’t, for you are a better person than that.
More likely you would imagine the busy hands in the kitchen, weathered and calloused, folding and wrapping more types of dim sum than you have ever tasted, faster than machinery, folding years of skill and seconds of flavour into every morsel.
Perhaps they are folding a fortune into every dumpling, a blessing into every bao. For aren’t those who manage to get a table and the last basket of wu gok, the mashed taro and minced pork almost scalding hot and the crust of lighter-than-tempura floss still crispy, the most fortunate of them all?