I will begin this review by saying that I did not enjoy my dumplings at the Upper West Side Dim Sum Sam.  This location only recently opened and hopefully it is just a matter of the staff getting the initial kinks out of the system.  Given its pedigree, Dim Sum Sam has every chance of improving and becoming great. 

Dim Sum Sam is a NYC based fast casual, mini-chain focused on the “greatest hits” of Dim Sum and is owned by the team behind the Dim Sum Palace mini-chain.  I have eaten at the Hell’s Kitchen and the Korea Town Dim Sum Palace locations and really enjoyed eating at both of them.  At Dim Sum Sam you order your food via a touch screen system, which is missing pictures for a lot of the food items and is really slow to use.  I imagine at lunch or dinner rush long lines can form at the two ordering kiosks. The restaurant has four 4-top tables, a 2-top table and a row of eight stools at a bar looking out onto Broadway.  I get the idea of the fast casual, Dim Sum concept, but the Upper West Side Dim Sum Sam is still figuring out how to execute on it.

The Dumplings:  I ordered four of the wide variety of dumplings that Dim Sum Sam serves, which usually come three to an order.  The pork soup dumplings were well cooked and none of the wrappers had ruptured and leaked their soup, but that is probably because the wrappers were quite robust and thick – these were not delicate Xio Long Bao.  These bao had a good amount of soup in them, close to two spoonsful of the small plastic spoons they provide, but the soup had a metallic taste to it. 

Just like at Dim Sum Palace the filling of the shrimp and pea shoot dumplings was delicious, but at Dim Sum Sam they had been totally overcooked.  The dumpling wrappers had glued themselves to the bottom of the steamer and the wrappers pulled apart when I tried to pick them up with my chopsticks – basically I ate de-constructed shrimp and pea shoot dumplings.  The steamed roast duck dumplings had the same issue, and as a bonus they did not taste great.  The filling had been over-seasoned, with what tasted like 5-spice powder, such that the roast duck flavor was overpowered and lost.

The last dumpling that I tried was the pan-fired pork and leak dumplings.  These dumplings tasted good, and I was enjoying them until I bit into a hard piece of pork gristle or cartilage.  I stopped eating this order.

The Location:  the Upper West Side of Manhattan location of Dim Sum Sam is on Broadway between 92^nd and 93^rd street, on the west side of the street.  This location is easily accessible from the 96^th street 1,2,3 train station.