G'day GUEST,Q,

You're right ... it should be close to dim sum in English, from the Cantonese dim-sam (with a long 'a' that I can't accent in the standard ASCII set!). That means "dot of the heart" and refers to a meal of small savoury snacks.

In Australia (and probably other (~) English environments) "dim sim" means a single item: "a small roll of steamed or fried meat, cooked in thin pastry". These have specific names in Chinese - like gar gee for a steamed pork example. Eric's line: " ... pie or a dim sim ..." indicates that he is using the words in this singular sense - and "Bluey Schmidt" would not know of any other sense (except as a racial slur that calls all Asians "dim sims")!

Regards,

Bob Bolton