Fresh Noodle Rolls are made on demand at Chi Chinese Restaurant.

Many large cities, like San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, and even Portland, have a Chinatown area where you can find dim sum for brunch. Diners choose from a variety of rice dumplings filled with pork or shrimp, buns, small cakes or balls from carts that are pushed past tables by waiters. While Central Oregon’s population is not large enough to support the full carts-to-tables experience, two restaurants offer dim sum for brunch on the weekend — Chi Chinese and Sushi Bar in Bend serves dim sum on Saturdays, and Cindy’s Chinese Garden in Redmond offers it on Sundays.

Both restaurants offer very different experiences, each catering to their specific clientele. Chi has a menu where diners can choose individual items (sort of the cart without the cart). Cindy’s caters to the casual diner who wants basic Chinese food, offering combination plates that include a variety of dim sum accompanied by lo mein noodles.

Chi Saturday Dim Sum

Last year, chef/owner Di Long went to Hong Kong to learn how to make dim sum from scratch. While she had been folding dim sum since she was a child, she learned how to fold each type of dim sum and to always use the freshest ingredients.

There are 22 items on the dim sum menu ranging in price from $4 to $6 for two or three pieces. As Long makes all of them each week, there is a limited quantity of each dish. Popular items can run out. Diners choose the number of servings of each item from a checklist. Long explained that the restaurant opted against the traditional rolling carts because the food has to be cooked in advance, resulting in a lot of waste when items aren’t chosen. Instead, each freshly made dim sum is cooked, fried or steamed to order. Steamed items are served in the traditional steaming baskets with multiple steamed items stacked. The noodle rolls are hand-made on-demand.

We had the Shu Mai (pork and shrimp dumpling); a Pan-Seared Potsticker filled with pork, scallions, ginger, cabbage and covered with Asian slaw; and the Fresh Noodle Rolls with shrimp. From the first bite, we could taste the delicate balance of flavors and freshness in each dish. The potsticker was doughy on one side and crispy on the pan-seared side. Trained as a pastry chef (she previously owned La Magie), Long has the skills to make the doughy bun of the char-siu bao (Steamed BBQ Pork Bun). The sweet bun complemented the savory barbecue flavor of the pork inside.

Unfortunately, there were two dishes that we had to send back. The Steamed Ribs with Black Bean were dry and had no hint of any black bean sauce flavor. The Salt and Pepper Calamari was chewy and rubbery. Later, I discussed this with Long, who agreed that she has had a hard time finding a good source for the calamari but hopes to have it rectified soon.

Cindy’s Chinese Garden in Redmond

Chef/Owner Cindy Chong also discussed how difficult it is to make dim sum and to find staff who can help fold and prepare it. To offer dim sum for brunch along with the usual lunch items on Sundays, she brings in frozen dim sum made in San Francisco and serves a variety of items on combination plates. Dim sum platters run from $7.50 for four types of dim sum with lo mein to $10.50 for six kinds of dim sum including fried shrimp.

The Shrimp Dumplings and Seafood Shaomai were both doughy and had unrecognizable contents inside. The Shrimp Dumplings had the fishy flavor of thawed frozen shrimp. The Seafood Shaomai wasn’t fishy but seemed to have a starchy center as well.

The BBQ Pork Buns and the Peach Bun were properly steamed. The pork buns were tasty with the consistency of most char siu bao that I’ve eaten before. The smaller Peach Bun was filled with sweet bean paste. It had no peach and was only so named because it is a sweet (not a savory) bao.

Two items on the dim sum plate are made in-house. The first is the fried shrimp. This shrimp had good flavor, though a couple of them were dry. The breading was the thickness of the breading on a corn dog that’s served at a fair. The Sesame Balls were also house-made. These were excellent. The sesame exterior had a rich, nutty flavor and was not greasy as is often the case at other restaurants. Inside was the satisfyingly sweet bean paste.

Chong explained that she does make her own potstickers from scratch but that they are not offered with the dim sum as they take 15 minutes to prepare. We tried them along with house-made crab puffs. The crab puffs (often called Crab Rangoon) are crispy fried wontons stuffed with cream cheese and crab, served with sweet and sour sauce. A favorite of mine, I enjoyed them as there was a good amount of cream cheese and enough crab to give it a seafood flavoring. The potstickers were also well made, very crispy on the pan-seared side and moist but not too doughy. Each was filled with a generous serving of pork. The pork was also moist but very dense with no other ingredients obvious in the mixture. It’s served with a savory sauce with fresh scallions, soy sauce, ginger and a touch of chili oil.

It’s nice to know that if you are looking for a dim sum fix on the weekends, there are places to go in Central Oregon. It’s always more fun when you share with a group of friends.