Diverse Dim Sum: A Whole-hearted Devotion to the Ultimate Delicacy

With dim sum increasingly becoming one of the most popular snacks among young consumers, Diverse Dim Sum has brought diners with extraordinarily breathtaking delicacies prepared with much heart. 

Diverse Dim Sum
(347) 925-5716
133-35 Roosevelt Ave #12, 
FLushing, NY 11354

Diverse Dim Sum was originally launched in September 2013 at a mall in Flushing. Later, it was relocated in the food court not very far from its old location. 

The internal space of the restaurant is quite small and diners need to enjoy their food in the public space offered by the food court. As a result, the restaurant adopts a minimalist style of decoration, but that does not reduce the owner’s spirit to hang lanterns during major festivals to highlight a celebratory atmosphere. 
The restaurant mainly offers Shanghai dishes, dim sum snacks and seasonal dishes. Drunken Crab is made from small-sized, fully mature crabs which undergo careful cleaning and meticulous marinating processes to produce rich flavors of freshness and fragrance and a variety of nutritional elements. Wine Marinated Duck Tongue is another signature dish that goes perfectly with alcohol drinks. The fresh, tender duck tongues carry a slight enchanting fragrance of wine after being soaked in white spirit. The Shanghai Pan-fired Buns, with a golden color crisp skin and fresh, soft and slightly salty stuffing, give off a mouth-watering fragment that tantalize your appetite for hearty eating. 

The Xiaolongbao with crab roe filling has a transparent skin and one bite of it would give you rich and mellow juice that drives your taste buds crazy. Pan Fried Pork Dumplings, unlike other think-skin tender dumplings, offers a unique sensation of taste due to a slightly different preparation procedures:  Fry the skin of the dumplings with an appropriate amount of oil till it becomes scorched and crisp, sprinkle some salt and sesame on top of it to raise its freshness, and the resultant dumplings with a size just right for one mouthful bite. Finally, there are also the Shanghai Capsella Wonton teeming with the flavor of the spring, freshly toasted Durian Layer Cake, and the most popular signature dish - Sweet Green Rice Ball, an Internet celebrity dish, that is stuffed with “thousands of ingredients”. While trying its best to preserve traditional flavors, Diverse Dim Sum is also committed to keeping its offerings updated with the trend in China to cater to customers’ constantly changing needs.  

Mr. Chen, the owner, noticed that the best-selling offerings of the restaurant were mainly dim sum. To balance the sales between regular dishes and dim sum and earn more repeat customers, he decided to give away a few popular dim sum items as a gift complementing customers’ dishes in order to make profits, though small, through quick turnovers. Not only do customers speak highly of its dishes, but many guests even voluntarily post recommendations of the restaurant on Xiaohongshu, a popular social commerce site. Such a popularity has helped attract even more young customers to the restaurant. 

At the restaurant, all stuffing and ingredients are fresh from the market of the day and surplus ingredients from the previous day are not used. For instance, dim sum requiring freshly purchased ingredients like pan-fried buns and sweet green rice ball steamed with wormwood juice, or seasonal offerings like rice dumplings and moon cakes are routinely booked in advance. Otherwise, customers have to wait patiently for their preparation. Mr. Chen pays particular attention to ingredients used in the restaurant. A strict control over salt and sugar is maintained in precise measurement. Mr. Chen used to work in both Japanese and Korean restaurants where he developed a special interest in the organic ingredients used there. With a longer growth cycle, organic food has many benefits to human body, but it can also be very expensive. Due to its understandability, Mr. Chen temporarily dropped the idea of using organic food and instead opted for fresh ingredients that offer better textual softness and flavor. 

Although only a small area needs to be cleaned, Mr. Chen never lowers his sanitary standards. Cleaning is the first thing to do for the day after the restaurant is open for business. Designated personnel are assigned to every section of the restaurant, and pest control companies are hired to thoroughly clean kitchen floors that are prone to be infested with cockroaches and rats. 

The restaurant is currently staffed by 7 employees, and each of them, whether the manager, waiters or the chef, is a top gun in the industry. Liu Chaojie, the chef, used to serve as the head chef in a star hotel in Shanghai and was certified as a senior Chinese chef in 1996. Another chef of the restaurant is Wu Yinjie who graduated from Shanghai Institute of Tourism and used to work as the head dim sum chef of a four-star hotel in Shanghai. Mr. Chen requires every employee to work with a conscientious attitude and forbids any sign of seeking instant success. He believes that one should try his best once he decides that a ting is worth doing. 

In his early days after settling in the U.S., Mr. Chen was a particularly hardworking, diligent and meticulous worker. His boss, thinking of highly of him, offered him two booths in order for him to start his own business. With years’ worth of experience in catering business, Mr. Chen quickly gained enough expertise to run a restaurant, which facilitated to launch the Diverse Dim Sum. Mr. Chen also used to launch his offerings onto group-buying platforms with a view of increasing sales, but he later withdrew from many platforms as he found that there was too much vicious competition. Mr. Chen believes that it is of great importance for a vendor to select suitable platforms. 

Although fairly satisfied with the current performance, Mr. Chen aspires to do better. He plans to find a larger store with dedicated kitchen and dining spaces so that he can provide service for more customers.