Dim sum a big part of CaiE's Asian spread

Despite deployment of those tiresome emoticons, e-mails can't yet convey real emotion. Still, I can almost hear the plaintive, hopeful tones when area newcomers e-mail me wondering where they can find good dim sum in Northern Nevada.

Until recently, I always sighed and replied that dim sum - so essential to Chinese food culture in the Bay Area, never mind in Hong Kong - didn't exist in any appreciable or accomplished way hereabouts other than a small selection at Chinese Duck House.

Yes, I said, several restaurants offer egg rolls and potstickers, but these dishes, at least as they're often prepared locally, are to dim sum what "Chopsticks" is to piano virtuosity.

So, imagine my delight when CaiE's Oriental Café opened recently with a small dim sum menu on weekdays and a weekend lineup that stretches to almost three dozen plates. (No, that's not a misprint. CaiE's takes its name from owner CaiE George (née Peng), whose first name is a conflated Anglicization of the Mandarin word for "swan.")

Siu mai — the ruffled basket dumplings brimming with minced pork, shrimp and hard-boiled egg - are toothsome and meaty without being rubbery (the standard siu mai infraction). I grab a quick steamer on my first visit, and a later trip confirms my initial impression of quality.

Har gau - the pleated, translucent, wheat flour pouches so often paired with siu mai - deliver payloads of tender shrimp that whisper of sesame oil. The dumplings display the classically correct balance of sticki- and chewiness.

CaiE's draws its general inspiration from Cantonese cuisine, but it isn't trying to be authentic in the way of, say, Golden Fortune in the Eldorado Hotel Casino. But neither does CaiE's serve that tired, Americanized mish-mash that so many places pass off as Chinese cooking.

Instead, the restaurant offers something in the middle, and that's why it's not surprising to find Vietnamese style summer rolls — freshly made; I watched - issuing from the kitchen. My party dredges the chicken version through thick peanut dipping sauce. A variety of Asian basil nestles inside the rolls and makes them taste subtly different from the usual efforts.

For sale by owner

George supervises the dim sum service, as she does for everyone else in the restaurant one evening. (And no, for you relentless conspiracy theorists, she doesn't know who we are.) I forget how pleasurable it is to be waited upon by a restaurant's owner.

When the Peking duck arrives — meaty, juicy with the pop! of bursting duck fat and beautifully sliced — George really goes into culinary gear. In the traditional manner, she spreads pancakes with duck sauce, tucks in some sliced fowl and graces everything with slivered scallions. George works until every pancake, every duck slice, every scallion sliver has been thus dispatched.

And a word about those pancakes. As soon as a waiter whips off the steamer cover, I know the pancakes aren't the usual thick, spongy specimens that have been frozen. These are clearly homemade. And they're thin enough so that my thumb and forefinger leave imprints when I hoist the duck-filled pancakes mouthward. Bliss.

And bliss times two when George sets down the duck carcass on a plate, bits of meat still clinging to it.

"For you to make soup," she says, reading my mind.

Spicy shrimp tossed with salt, pepper and a bright confetti on minced jalapeños wear puffy robes of deep-fried breading. They're not the least bit greasy or, alas, spicy enough for our taste (we recognize that spiciness is a tricky quality in a restaurant). But a quick anointment with chili oil remedies matters.

Imperial images

CaiE's might occupy a strip mall space — to be honest, what doesn't occupy a strip mall space in Double Diamond? — but George works hard to make the room appealing.

The waiters (who could use a bit more instruction in Chinese food) sport Chinese style jackets; George herself wears a blue brocade jacket one evening. Kitchen tools hang in front of the open kitchen. Carved wooden screens line one wall; another displays sketches by George after a series of cityscapes once housed in the Chinese imperial collections.

The sketches are finely detailed and invite close inspection. However, the images don't hold me for long, as beautiful as they are. The weekend dim sum menu draws me back.

I can't wait to try fried turnip cakes, egg custard tarts (dan ta), lotus leaf bundles filled with sticky rice and my beloved xiao long bao, the famous "soup" dumplings of Shanghai. The weekends promise to be tasty indeed.

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