If you haven't grown up eating it or you haven't been introduced by friends or family dim sum is one of the most intimidating foods to try.

I would love to help break down the intimidation factor for you and give you a little bit of an explanation about what you're ordering, how to eat it, all that jazz.

If you had on over to my personal youtube page, it's called king kogi, I actually do a review of my favorite dim sum restaurant in Toronto.

I've been going there since I was a teenager and of course during cold more it made it a lot more difficult so I did delivery and it was still amazing.

But for today on H.

HMC studio, I'd like to tell you a little childhood story all about dim sum.

So a lot of you already know that I grew up with a neighbor named mickey.

I did a video about going to J.

Town with her recently and we had Corey at her house and when I was in middle school mickey and her mom and I all went grocery shopping and for lunch, her mom took us to a dim sum restaurant walking into this restaurant was like nothing I had ever experienced before.

First of all, it was like downstairs, if I recall and when you go in it's like a gigantic vast room, something that could host a wedding or some kind of an event.

It was filled with circular tables which was also very unique for me and every table could hold about 8 to 10 people.

There were tiny circular plates and dishes and weird little baskets of course these were bamboo steamers, but I didn't know that and they were everywhere.

All over the tables, there were just three of us.

And so they sat us at a table with strangers and I had never before joined a table of strangers to eat a meal, luckily the table is quite big, so you're not really sitting with them, you're just kind of sharing this, this mutual space, but you can see what they're ordering and you can see all these little dishes on their table and you're kind of like, what's this, what's that?

What are they doing?

When I looked over I saw these white squishy looking buns, they just seemed like impossibly soft.

I saw these translucent sea shells filled with pink on the inside.

I find out later it's going to be shrimp.

I saw these little bowls filled with these little roles that looked like kind of crepes, but like super saucy.

I was completely out of my comfort zone and really blown away as to what I was going to be eating First.

They brought us over a very humble looking white pot of tea and we all have these little tiny white glasses with no handles on them which was unique for me to waiters and waitresses were zipping around zipping in and out of like a back room and they'd come up with these little silver trays and trays were just stacked with like dishes and steam and like little basket and I had no idea what was going on.

Mickey's mom stopped a woman and just pointed and asked for a bunch of these little dishes and she would just like to point at it and they would just put it on the table in front of us.

When have I ever gone to a restaurant when there wasn't really a menu present where you just picked things off of a cart as it went by.

It was almost like a buffet in reverse like you sit at the table and they bring you the items.

I also noticed that even though I saw the same lady come by, she didn't have the same stuff on her tray.

Some stuff look like little tiny custard tarts.

Some things looked like they might have been spicy.

I couldn't tell what the differences were in front of me on the table where these little tiny bottles that looked like all these different potions of sauces.

So one of them was a soy sauce that mickey poured for me in a tiny little plate and then there was like a spicy looking oil and then another darker one which I found out later as a type of vinegar and there were like tiny little spoons and I just had no idea how to put these together.

Later on I learned that this type of restaurant where people are pushing these little trays going to the back kitchen and getting fresh items and bringing them out is a very traditional way that dim sum restaurants used to work.

But apparently a lot of them don't do that anymore.

Instead have a piece of paper and on the piece of paper you can see the item that you want to order and you'll write a number or italie.

So if you want one of that item, you just write one if you want to you right to and then you hand that paper to a waiter or waitress.

They'll bring it to the kitchen in the back and then they'll bring out the dishes kind of bit by bit or all at once, depending on what you've ordered.

Well you guys, it was shockingly delicious.

It blew my little fragile mind.

I tried shockingly delicious morsels, things that were stuffed plump pink shrimp and they had chewy outside noodle like textures but it wasn't quite pasta and it wasn't quite sticky and gummy.

I couldn't place my finger on what this texture was.

Of course a lot of dim sum is made with things like Kuantan Whoppers, wanton weapons things that are made with like potato starch or maybe tapioca starch things that are kind of more rice, peppery.

So it has that kind of pull that texture to it kind of similar to when you have mochi and marquis has that pull that bounce but not as sticky.

This was just a texture that I had never had before and it was delightful.

I had these yellow steamed things stuffed with ground pork and shrimp that you dipped and bit into it.

It was like these little mini meatballs but they didn't taste like the meatballs.

I was used to having, I had these soft white buns and when you pulled them apart inside it was filled with like a pulled pork in a sweet and kind of savory barbecue sauce.

I even have to take a leaf and open up the leaf and inside of it was rice and I had never seen such a huge leaf in my life.

I will explain this leaf in my video on King Cokie by the way.

Oh and they even had dessert.

They had custard tarts, they had buns filled with sweet stuff on the inside.

I even had tofu that tasted like almond, but like a sweet almond and you kind of scooped it out of a bowl.

All these things were like what is going on, What this exists.

It felt like this underground culture that I had no idea about.

Well now you can see how foodie Martino was born.

I had all these interesting experiences at a young age that made me feel like there was more out there in the world food wise and I definitely have a big thanks to mickey and her family for introducing me to so many different things along with all my other neighbors who were from different places around the world and so I was able to eat their food for breakfast or their food for lunch and go wow is this Canadian food or it's not Canadian food?

Well it's kind of Canadian food is very confusing, but luckily Toronto is such a multinational city.

Markham, Toronto, Mississauga, all these different places have different tiny little burrows so you can go to like chinatown, you can go to little Italy you can have african food from all types of places in africa, you can have indian food from all over India, it's just such an incredible wonderland of food later on in life when I went to Beijing and Taiwan I had the chance to try dim sum over there as well and you know I was pretty blown away at how legit the dim sum was in Toronto and in Markham I mean it didn't taste that different.

Obviously the ingredients are different because of that whole like you know terroir thing like where something grows, affects the produce, having an orange in japan or having an orange in Korea is different than having an orange in florida or in Toronto you can't help it the soil the earth, the water, how you feed it, that will help change the taste of things.

So having them, some in other parts of the world of course has a different taste because they're using local ingredients but having them some in Toronto, it wasn't that far off the mark.

It was pretty legit there.

I say too legit to quit, too legit, too legit to quit.

Please tell me somebody, somebody knows what I'm talking about please.

Now historically dim sum was actually made to accompany T.

So people that speak Cantonese might call it um to and I know I'm gonna butcher all this stuff because I don't speak Cantonese or mandarin.

I've only spoken korean and japanese and so they are not the same.

So many death songs and vowels that I didn't know existed from different parts of the world in different languages.

So young literally means drinking tea and travelers would be traveling through china and they would stop at these little restaurants to have t kind of like how we might stop to have a coffee and they started to invent these little tiny morsels that they could have with it.

Apparently dim sum is like 2500 years old and it's like historically talked about in poems and songs like that's pretty amazing.

Nowadays, dim sum is so popular that there are a lot of places that served him some as their only thing that they serve all day long but there are still places that will only serve dim sum for example on Sundays in the morning or places that will only do it in the morning specifically.

It's almost like a breakfast meal.

So if you do head off to a dim sum restaurant in your neighborhood, make sure you check their hours to see if they're actually serving all day dim somewhere not.

So for the first time we're going to a dim sum restaurant, it can be absolutely intimidating.

So I want to share with you just a few of my favorite items that I order and I would love for you guys in the comment section to talk about your favorite items as well.

And I also love it.

If you let people know what city you're in and maybe the name of your favorite restaurant and that way people can kind of look it up online and go find it on their own.

I apologize in advance for my pronunciation.

First up har gow these are shrimp dumplings and they have been steamed instead of fried.

So when you're used to having a dumpling that has that crispy exterior, this one's gonna be translucent.

That was like that seashell shaped one that I saw a really good har gow.

The outside has not been overcooked.

If it tastes like gummy or like falls apart and the shrimp is pouring out, then it's been over steamed cheung fun.

These are fat rice noodles inside of it.

They put either shrimp or they put beef or they might put pork and it's rolled up like a crepe and that steamed and then they'll often serve that with a sauce on top.

It's kind of like a sweet soy sauce.

If I had to describe it to my, this is also called shu mai.

Sometimes it's an open faced dumpling, so it's a yellow wanton looking rapper and they put the meat in the center so it's ground pork and shrimp and they put it in and they close it like this, the top you can still see this is what I thought was a meatball when I was a kid.

It's quite smooth and ground up and the flavors are just fantastic.

No becau also known as radish cake daikon when it's all ground up, they put it together in like a little flat patty cake that almost looks like a hash brown and resembles a hash brown and texture and sometimes they'll throw little bits of like meat or sausage or bacon in there and they pan fry it turn up cake is so good.

I never ordered it before because the word cake makes me feel like it's gonna be sweet, but it's not, it is savory, think of it like a savory hash brown.

I had one in Taiwan that blew my freaking mind.

It's become my bar like the bar of daikon cake, daikon radish cake and and I, I fear that I will never be able to reach that daikon cake ever again.

I will have to return one day, luckily our friends there Ron and Phoebe, I'm coming to crash at your place.

Loamy G or no maggie, it's like a huge leaf and inside of it is like a glutinous rice gluten.

This is just another way to say sticky rice and it's been steamed inside the leaf and it has a little bit of chinese sausage in it, which I explain more in my video on kin kogi smells amazing and it tastes amazing and it's so intimidating if you've never had to eat food from a leaf but don't miss out on it.

It's so good if you'd like to hear my review of dim sum head on over to king kogi on Youtube, that's where I'm putting up the video of me chowing down and eating all my favorite types and I hope I can inspire you guys to head out there and try some of this food because it's so good and it's gonna blow your freaking mind think of it like a spanish tapas the way that you're sharing it.

It's like a little tiny dishes that you share with lots of friends and family or if you're like me, you can just eat it alone because you're a foodie, let me know in the comment section below what your favorite in some is and please again share your favorite restaurants and what city you're in because maybe you'll help someone go up there and explore.

All right guys, how do you sign off from the stuff?

I don't know.

See you on the internet.

I mean, I guess we're on the internet.

So yeah can we just talk about Loki?

I'm not gonna say anything.

I'm not gonna do any spoilers, Loki.

So good.

It's just so okay.