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It's not every day a two-year-old eats sticky rice out of a lotus leaf. 

But on Sunday afternoons at Guang Zhou, in a former McDonald's on 11th Street east of Harvard, it happens. I would know - I was there. 

Break

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For awhile now some church buds of ours have been trying to invite us out for one of the only Dim Sum dinners in Tulsa. 

What the heck is Dim Sum, you ask? Here's the jist: It's a type of Chinese food service that features individual-sized portions of food, usually served in small steamer baskets, on a small plate or, in the case of our first Dim Sum dinner, what looked like the metal bowls that came with this tiffin box my husband brought back from Afghanistan. 

If it's Chinese food and it's coming out of a kitchen in the back of a former McDonald's, you know it's gonna be good. 

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Here's how it works: The dim sum cart wheels by your table and you point to what you want. Then, magically, it's yours. What's most fun is to request a variety of things, slide them onto the Lazy Susan in the middle of every table at Ghang Zhou and spin to win. 

What's on the cart? Lots of different types dumplings - shrimp, pork and more. And potstickers, crowned with a single pea. And char siu baau, which are these really great steamed fluffy buns made from wheat flour and filled with Cantonese barbecued pork. 

And tasty shrimp and pork fillings wrapped in skins of translucent rice flour. Or, as our dining friends called them, gelatinous deliciousness. 

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And lo mai gai wrapped in a lotus leaf. Which is, apparently and unbeknownst to me, one of my son's favorite foods ever. 

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Ever. 

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I loved it too, actually. While the leaf wasn't very tasty (for some reason my husband was compelled to give it a try and reported thus), the innards that were steamed inside, a concoction of sticky rice and tender pork and chicken, were the very definition of comfort food: Warm, starchy, meaty, and deeply savory. 

And caramely. And sticky. It's the kind of stuff a girl could eat all evening long while camped out with a bunch of pillows on the couch, in front of yet another home screening of The Notebook. 

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See those rice-flour skins on the dumplings? Apparently those take time to learn to make to that photo-worthy standard. So when you find some made as well as these, it's craftsmanship that's definitely worth noticing. And appreciating. 

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I would just like to take this opportunity to say that there were not Phoenix talons on the cart at this Dim Sum dinner. 

Phoenix talons are, by the way, deep fried chicken feet. 

While we love us some yard bird, I just don't think that Oklahoma is ready for deep fried chicken feet. 

At least, not these Oklahomans. 

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Aren't they cute? They're sweet, too. And they're nice to my son. 

But then, what female <i>isn't</i> nice to my son? 

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Not that I'd have any idea why. 

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For dessert there was a variety of pastry. My favorite was the egg tart, a personal-sized, flakey puff pastry filled with egg custard. 

The ladies' man's favorite was the jin deui, or matuan, a chewy-and-sticky-on-the-inside, crispy-on-the-outside ball of dough. It's filled with red bean paste, rolled in sesame seeds and deep fried. 

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Sounds strange, tastes delicious. 

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"Hmmm. Yes. Delicious. Quite." 

Discerning food critics agree. 

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Hey, son? 

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You got a little something right there. 

OK, got it. Carry on. 

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Dim sum at Ghang Zhou starts in the late morning and continues into the afternoon. I'd recommend grabbing a table during magic hour, or the time when the turnover on the cart is greatest. According to my observations on the day we visited, it's between 12:30 and 1:30pm. 

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Use a dim sum dinner service at Guang Zhou as an easy excuse to expose your kids (and yourself) to a cuisine that, if you're locked into the stereotypical Okie diet of meat and potatoes, will challenge and surprise you. Who knows, you just might find your new favorite food.

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Yeah. You just might. 

<b>Ghang Zhou</b>
Where: 4003 E. 11th Street (no, this isn't the dim sum restaurant of the same name that's attached to the Econo Lodge Motel off of I-44 in east Tulsa)
Call: (918) 835-7888
Dim sum hours: Sunday, 11am-2pm

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