Walk into Brooklyn Park's Grand Palace on a weekend morning and you may think you've stumbled into a little bit of Hong Kong.
"SHIU MAI! HA GOW!" the waitress cries in Cantonese as she snakes her steaming aluminum cart between tables, slowing just enough to give patrons a peek at the pork and shrimp dumplings.
The chattering, largely Asian crowd knows the ritual of the movable feast of dim sum: they point, they get, they eat. And the cart moves on.
Translated as a "little bit of heart," dim sum is to the Cantonese what teatime is to the English. It is a traditional Cantonese brunch, and also the delicacies served at the occasion.
Although dim sum is standard fare in Hong Kong restaurants, it can be found at only a handful of the approximately 170 Chinese restaurants in the Baltimore metropolitan area.
Local restaurateurs, even those who are Cantonese, say they've avoided serving the authentic cuisine because it isn't profitable. It's labor-intensive, requires hiring a special chef. And, there's virtually no market for the Cantonese delicacy outside the area's Asian population.
Fewer than one-third of Maryland's 139,719 Asians live in the Baltimore area, according to U.S. Census figures. The majority reside in Montgomery and Prince George's counties.
"If you don't have a large dim sum trade, then it's not worthwhile," said Baltimore's Golden Dragon owner Minhue Der, who has been running Chinese restaurants for 27 years.
Some restaurant owners found that out the hard way.
Two and half years ago, Tony Kwok set aside a part of his kitchen and hired more employees to make dim sum, one of China's most complicated foods. Everything must be handmade and prepared fresh daily. For example, each of the hundreds of bite-size dumplings contains a filling wrapped in dough that has been rolled out and cut into individual pieces.
After two months of serving dim sum, Mr. Kwok, who runs Millersville's Dragon Garden, found that few of his non-Asian customers knew what he was serving, or were willing to pay his prices.
"The dim sum are in small dishes, $1.50 to $2.50," Mr. Kwok said. "[People] don't want to spend that money."
Other restaurant owners don't want to deal with the higher salaries and the idiosyncrasies of specialty chefs.
"Dim sum chefs are a little like little girls -- very temperamental," noted H. C. Ting, owner of Hunan Annapolis in Pasadena. "Dealing with minute items, hundreds and hundreds of them, you're resupplying constantly, [they get] temperamental."
The few restaurants that do roll out the dim sum carts say they do so to stay ahead of their competitors.
"We think about big competition among Chinese restaurants," said Jennifer Kwong, manager of the Dragon House in Owings Mills. "We think dim sum is kind of unique in this area. This is real Chinese food -- not like chop suey."
Last year, the Dragon House hired a dim sum chef trained in Hong Kong. For a while, business was slow, and the restaurant was about give up on the idea. Eventually word got out that authentic dim sum could be found in Owings Mills.
"The Chinese people, when they taste it, they know," said Ms. Kwong. "If it doesn't taste good, they won't come."
Perhaps the area's best-known dim sum restaurant is David Tam's Grand Palace.
Mr. Tam has served dim sum daily since opening his restaurant in 1988. His secret to success with dim sum lies in an old Cantonese tactic he brought over from Hong Kong.
"In Hong Kong or Canton, dim sum restaurants are a kind of 'chiu kuei' or method to bring people to come to this restaurant to let people know this restaurant is big enough for their banquet parties," said Mr. Tam, 55.
Mr. Tam lures patrons by offering 35 dim sum items on the weekdays and more than 60 on the weekends. The menu ranges from dumplings to chicken feet with black bean sauce. Mr. Tam profits when satisfied customers return for dinner and also throw wedding banquets, birthday parties and baby showers there. He holds about four large dinner parties a month in his 180-seat restaurant.
Mr. Tam said he decided to serve dim sum because his friends were taking their banquets to Chinese restaurants in Silver Spring and Washington, where there are at least 25 dim sum restaurants. He knew that if he offered authentic dim sum, he could persuade people to hold their large gatherings at his Brooklyn Park restaurant.
His first step was to hire an authentic dim sum chef from Hong Kong. Mr. Tsui, 45, has been making the intricate pastries and dishes since he was 14. Like other dim sum masters, he commands higher salaries than do regular cooks, earning as much as 50 percent more. But under his direction, the kitchen can perfectly fold and steam "shiu mai" and "ha gow" at a rate of 250 and 150 an hour.
And customers can tell the difference.
"This is equivalent to the dim sum you'll eat in New York," Sue Cheung, 34, of Catonsville, said between bites of beef rice noo
dle crepes cradled in her chopsticks. "They do it the original Chinese way."
Ms. Cheung has been coming to the Grand Palace every weekend since it opened. She brings her mother and 18-month-old son to enjoy the food on which she was reared.
"I don't really care for other places," Ms. Cheung added. "This is the only place I'll come."
Even Cantonese restaurant owners long for the taste of their homeland. Mr. Tam said 80 percent of his customers on Sundays are restaurateurs enjoying their morning off.
"I go there about every two weeks to eat the dim sum," said Mr. Kwok, unfazed about helping the competition. "I just like good food."