Here’s What You’ll Be Eating At Dim Sum House (Notably: Free Soup Dumplings Tomorrow)

Last week, we talked about the opening of Dim Sum House in University City–the new restaurant from Jane Guo and Jackson Fu of Jane G’s in Center City. I, for one, was psyched about the place opening because of the battling dim sum menus (Shanghai-style and Cantonese), the late hours and, well, pretty much everything else coming from the kitchen.

But tomorrow, January 11, is the official grand opening of the place, and guess what they’re doing to celebrate?

They’re offering free soup dumplings.

On Wednesday, January 11, from noon until 2pm, Dim Sum House will be serving free soup dumplings. That’s the big news. But it’s not the only news.

Starting at 7pm, they’re going to have a real grand opening party, with a lion dance, firecrackers, music, menu sampling and drink specials. And once all that is out of the way and Dim Sum House gets down to their regular, day-to-day business, there’s still more.

Right now, they’re operating seven days a week, for lunch, dinner and late night. Right now, the kitchen takes final orders from the full menu around 10pm on the weekdays and 11pm on the weekends, but there is a “starter” late-night menu available until 2am. Really, though, that’s just a place-holder. Something to keep everyone happy until the house can roll out a full late-night menu sometime in the next couple months. And that’s exciting. They’re also promising to add delivery and catering starting in February.

Want some pictures? Of course you do. This is what you’ll be eating at Dim Sum House:

Want to know one of the weird things about this place that has me totally excited to go? The kitchen has three chefs. There’s Chef Chen who does the Shaghai dim sum, chef Ricky Lee who does Cantonese dim sum, and chef Weng Qingheng who does…basically everything else (fried rice, noodles, house specialties and those familiar favorites like kung pao whatever). This, to me, seems like madness, but then I came up through many, very hierarchical French-style kitchens where there was one chef who was (almost without exception) insane, drunk, angry all the time, wickedly talented and not French. I can’t imagine being in a kitchen with three chefs. I can’t imagine something like that operating for more than a day without one of the chefs burning the place down just to spite the other two. But maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, the full menu is linked below. For the record, the cocktail list (which is also linked below) has almost a dozen drinks named for old kung fu movies–including three that name-check Big Trouble In Little China, one of the best movies of all time. In the future, they’re looking at adding happy hour, events, pairing menus–all kinds of stuff. And they’re also looking at expanding, making THIS Dim Sum House a sort of proof-of-concept for what might become a much bigger operation.

Dim Sum House Menu
Dim Sum House Cocktail Menu