Dim sim

Dim sim is a dumpling filled with ground meat—mainly pork—plus cabbage and other vegetables, wrapped in a thicker dough than traditional Chinese dumplings. It is sold steamed, with a soft wrapper, or fried, with a golden, crispy wrapper, and is usually eaten plain or with soy sauce and chili. You find it in fish-and-chips shops, food courts and markets in Melbourne and other Australian cities.

The most often told story credits cook Elizabeth Chong, daughter of William Chen Wing Young, a Chinese cook and entrepreneur in Melbourne. According to her, her father noticed that Australian customers at his Chinatown restaurant loved siu mai, a small Cantonese pork dumpling, and in the 1940s created a larger, more robust version that he began producing by the thousands. The thicker wrapper stood up to transport: he personally took the dumplings to football matches. Melbourne City Council’s art and heritage collection adds that he designed production so elderly Chinese who had arrived during the gold rush could sell them from small carts and earn a living.

The name comes from the pronunciation of dim sum in the dialect spoken by Melbourne’s Chinese community at the time: as Elizabeth Chong explained, people there didn’t say dim sum but dim sim.

From 1949, another Chinese cook, Ken Cheng, began selling steamed dim sims from a cart and later at the South Melbourne Market. His were round and much larger—about twice the weight of the common ones—and that shape became known as the South Melbourne dim sim.

In 2024, Melbourne City Council commissioned a ceramic of steamed and fried dim sims for its collection, displayed in 2025 in an exhibition about the city’s street foods.