Dim sum =? savory snack

[Benjamin Barrett]

On Aug 17, 2011, at 4:40 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Re: Dim sum =? savory snack
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>
> At 8/17/2011 06:55 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>> Well, with dim sum, how else are you going to
>> get it in a form you would call a snack? If you
>> eat it in the restaurant, is it a snack? To me
>> it would be a light lunch, but even so, it's not
>> a snack food, it's a food that is being eaten as a snack/light lunch.
>
> I won't argue with this.  By analogy, what do we
> call a meal of (Spanish) tapas? ... well,
> research shows "we" call it "Usu. pl. In Spanish
> bars or cafés, a *savoury* [there we are again]
> *snack* [ditto] or hors d'˛uvre [see below] of
> sausage, cured ham, seafood, potato salad, etc.,
> typically served with glasses of wine or sherry."
>
> "Appetizers" won't work, I guess, since dim sum
> are often both the appetizer and the
> satisfier.  Perhaps "small dishes of savouries or desserts"?
>
> "Hors d'˛uvre" too seems inappropriate for dim
> sum.  (For unknown reason, "hors d'˛uvre" doesn't
> come up in a simple search, but Advanced search
> full text does find it as a head-word.)

How about "in Cantonese cooking, small dishes of food often served from carts in a restaurant."

Dim sum is served outside strictly Cantonese restaurants now, I think, so perhaps that is too restrictive. Also, maybe "often served" should be "traditionally served" or "typically served."

I've eaten tapas and pintxos only in three or four places. In my experience, tapas are not necessarily snacks, though pintxos are. (I've eaten a whole meal on pintxos, but it took quite a few dishes…) The non-savory dishes I definitely recall are dates and chocolate. I think the dates had cheese inside, but the chocolate simply was not savory by any means.

BB

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