Cafe Dim Sum — Restaurant in Burlington

UPDATE December 2022: we have had the good fortune to have the hotpot / shabu shabu with Chef Sam and friends. The cuisine has a foundation of Chinese hot pot ingredients and Japanese style shabu shabu ingredients like udon and fish cakes. This is a dining experience that takes 1.5- 2.5 hours to enjoy as you are cooking your meat, vegetables and noodles with a broth during the meal. A good date or small party with friends kind of meal. The broth arrives warm with herbs and shittake mushrooms and placed in an individual convection burners in the table.

You order your meat platter: chicken, pork (shoulder, belly), prime rib, or seafood. It comes with vegetables. You can add extras to cook in your soup. I love the soybean skin plus the handmade dumplings (with a choice of different fillings). I also like the fried taro cake in the broth. You can make your own sauce base at the sauce bar and then add the special House sauce to dip your cooked ingredients. Over time your broth gets thick and you’ll need more water added to keep cooking your food. Be prepared to bring home your broth and any extra ingredients. It makes for a tasty second meal.

Written early November 2022: The newly expanded Cafe Dim Sum is great and the new system for ordering at the counter and getting dim sum from steamer and warming shelf are delicious as when they opened a year ago. Dim sum offers a lot of great steamed dishes, but the chef offers fried foods for those who are use to Americanized Chinese and are open to trying dishes that are unfamiliar to their palette. Please keep an open mind to eating these dim sum dishes.

Written in February 2022: I go to Cafe Dim Sum regularly and really appreciate the work that Chef Sam Lian does making each dish by hand. He goes through great lengths to bring quality Asian ingredients from NYC and Boston, which many places in Burlington have to do and reflected in pricing. If you have not eaten dim sum before, please leave your preconceived notions of Chinese food (American Chinese food is different tasting than authentic regional Chinese cuisine) at the door and be open to trying these small dishes packed with flavor and drink it with tea (they have some great teas…I like the chrysanthemum).

We are so happy to see a dim sum spot open in Burlington. The dim sum has many Cantonese favorites of ours including har gow (shrimp dumpling), Lo mai gai (chicken sticky rice with Chinese sausage, wrapped in tea leaf), fried sesame ball, turnip cake, ha cheung (shrimp wrapped in rice noodle), fried turnip cake, egg tart, and tripe. The food came out promptly once ordered at the register and was served hot. They had a good choice of teas to have with the meal.

The staff are nice. The cafe has a few tables, but be patient as folks will finish up and a table will open momentarily.

For those of us, who missed having dim sum in big cities especially Montreal, this cafe provides a taste of the familiar and is...

If you're craving Asian cuisine and you are near Burlington look no further than this well run Dim Sum style spot with fantastic menu options. If you come during non-hot plate hours (I believe it is before 4pm) it is a self-order/counter-service restaurant. You go up to the front and look at the menu items on a large board. They have variety of tea to order as well. We ordered 5 items which came out as they were made. It was fast service and my favorite part about the experience was that you pay at the end at the counter whenever you want so there is no delay or waiting on waitstaff to bring the check. We got a large pitcher of ice cold water. The tables were clean, the chairs were comfy, and the bathrooms were spotless all clear indications this was a well run restaurant. Our first order came out 6 minutes after we placed the order and it was the scallion pancake. The scallion pancake was super crispy and had 6 good sized pieces. They were super crispy, vegan and came with a delicious savory dark sauce - they were easily the best scallion pancakes I've ever had. The next item came out at 10 minutes, the sticky rice with red bean paste. There were 3 of these and they were wrapped in large inedible/decorative leaves tied with some string which took a little effort to open. The rice was sticky and gooey and the red bean paste was a soft core that mixed into the surrounding rice. It was sweet and delicious but a very small portion. While delicious it was probably my least favorite of the 5 items we ordered. The final three items all arrived at the 15 minute mark. The Fried Taro Cake was super crispy and had a tofu like appearance almost like somewhere between rice and tofu. The outside was fried and actually tasted a lot like a churro. It was amplified by dipping it in the sauce that came with the scallion pancake and our next item which was a Crispy Vegetable Egg Roll. The egg roll was absolutely mind blowing. My only complaint was it was just two small egg rolls - I will have to order more next time. The red egg roll sauce was a little sweet with a delayed but distinct spice. The last item and my favorite of them all was the Eggplant Black Bean with sauce. If you like Eggplant you CANNOT go wrong ordering this. The flavors were incredible and the sauce and beans did wonders in supporting the tenderly cooked Eggplant pieces. I've never had a dish quite like this. When we were all done we went up to the counter and paid. I would have been happy paying well over 50 dollars for this meal but was pleasantly surprised when I found the total bill was only 33 dollars. Talk about food for your money. I highly recommend Cafe Dim Sum. Stop in and try something new and be blown away like I was. One of my favorite spots near...

Dim sum in Burlington VT! While there are no ladies pushing carts, this dim sum is great. We found Cafe Dim Sum in 2021 - long waits for a few tables but well worth it. They closed to expand/renovate with the re-opening in the summer of 2022. Now during serving dim sum all day during the summer and offering hot pot soup in the evenings during the Fall Winter Spring. Our favorites are the tangy crispy spare ribs, shrimp dumplings (har gow), shrimp & pork bamboo roll, eggplant black bean sauce, baby bok chow, shrimp rolls, edamame, sesame balls and scallion pancakes. Probably will skip the garlic pork green beans. Wish they'd stir fry the taro cake instead of deep frying it. The shabu shabu or hot pot soup dinner is individual convection soups. While the soups are separate for each individual, the custom ordered meat, noodles, vegetables are usually shared. You are given chopsticks, fork, nets and spoons to cook your own soup. They have a whole area for making your own dipping sauces. Also dinner has a few dim sum dishes like edamame, tangy crispy spare ribs, sesame balls and scallion pancakes. We make hot pot at home in 1 large shared pot so for us, the dim sum...