NYC's Dim Sum Bloom opens in Rockville Centre
Claypot rice with fish and bok choy served takeout style at Dim Sum Bloom in Rockville Centre. Credit: Newsday/Andi Berlin
Dim sum is practically everywhere these days, but a new Rockville Centre shop has an interesting but controversial back story (as well as some tasty Chinese dumplings).
Dim Sum Bloom is an expanding group of fast-casual dumpling spots that started on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The original restaurant created a stir in early 2023 when it opened as Shun Lee Cafe, a similar name to an iconic midtown Chinese restaurant, Shun Lee Palace, popular since 1971. The new spot's owner, Sean Li, worked as an accountant for the Shun Lee group of restaurants and said he had gotten permission to expand into the fast casual market. But when expectant fans realized the new venture wasn't the same as their beloved spot, blowback ensued and Li was forced to change the name and go at it alone.
Since then, Dim Sum Bloom has expanded with even more casual takeout shops in Elmhurst, Queens, and now the South Shore of Long Island. The menu here doesn't include the gourmet Shanghainese and Cantonese dishes that the original Shun Lee Palace was known for, but it does have upscale options like black truffle shumai and Peking duck. The dumplings are often prepared at the Manhattan location by a team of Cantonese chefs and reheated at the various takeout locations. The restaurant also serves claypot rice dishes ($13.95) with traditional toppings like fish fillet and cordyceps flower, a stringy fungus used in Chinese cooking, although here it's served in a foil takeout container rather than a fancy clay pot.
Li has incorporated other cost-saving measures, such as stir-fry robot machines from California that prepare classic American-Chinese dishes like kung pao chicken, lo mein and fried rice. These dishes weren't listed on the menu during a recent visit, as the kitchen is still fine tuning, but they are available for order upon request. Dim Sum Bloom's Instagram page shows a machine in action. To cook a dish, a server sets the ingredients into a plastic tub that pours everything into a stir fry drum before it's poured into a takeout container. Li said he thinks this method of cooking will become much more popular in the future, as it saves on labor costs.
“Currently the price of the food is pretty high, so we want everybody to have the capacity to purchase the food," he said. “We don't want to lower the food quality, but we found a way to lower the price."
Dim Sum Bloom, 18 S. Village Ave, Rockville Centre, 516-240-1094, dimsumbloomny.com. Open 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
Andi Berlin is from Arizona and does not know where she is going. But when she gets there, she’ll find something beautiful and delicious that the world needs to taste.