Another cultural loss. I loved the carts and wonder about City View.
By Elena Kadvany, Food Reporter July 1, 2024 - San Francisco Chronicle
Carts piled high with bamboo steamers of plump dumplings, once a fixture of the dim sum experience across the Bay Area, are now an endangered species.
Many local restaurants stopped using the carts during the pandemic. Most never brought them back. Now, the pushcarts roam dining rooms at only a handful of dim sum restaurants, and some only bring them out on weekends. They’ve become a special occasion affair, something to seek out and cherish — though purists may insist anyway on ordering from a server for peak freshness. (While not a dim sum restaurant, customers can also find cart service at the Michelin-starred State Bird Provisions in San Francisco.)
San Francisco dim sum favorite Yank Sing is one of the few places where diners can still point to and order plates of sesame balls and pork buns on the roving carts. The restaurant revived them “as soon as we could,” co-owner Vera Chan Waller said, in response to customer demand.
“We believe cart service has become synonymous with the style of service and cuisine at Yank Sing, and we intend on continuing the tradition into the future,” she said.
Here are some of the remaining Bay Area dim sum restaurants with cart service, listed in alphabetical order. (Note: This is not an exhaustive list, and it reflects these restaurants’ service models in July 2024.)
Dim sum carts are disappearing in the Bay Area. Here’s where you can still find them
Greg
Another arrow in my TJ's quiver. I've been shopping at TJ's since the first one in the Bay Area opened in the Montecito Shopping Center in San Rafael in 1984. This iteration is very clean, bright, and spacious at 788 Laguna at Fulton.
