Some little girls grow up attending high tea with their grandmothers at the Plaza Hotel (hello, Eloise!) Others of us have dim sum.

Growing up in New York City in the 1970s and 80s, some of my fondest family memories involve the dim sum palaces of Chinatown in lower Manhattan, both for dim sum lunches and evening wedding banquets.  I will never forget the pleasure of drinking tea (or "yum cha" in Cantonese) with my grandmother, dressed in satin brocade and pearls with her hair freshly done. Sitting at a table near the dais, she would deftly order my favorite foods and jasmine tea from passing carts and waiters. Each server would place a red stamp on our table's order sheet, to be tallied at the end and paid at the cashier by the exit. The final bill is usually quite affordable, around $40 for a family of four.

Thirty years later, many of those halls have closed, and others have sprung up in Flushing and Eighth Avenue in Brooklyn, but it is still a treat to spontaneously jump in the car on a Sunday morning and take the Holland Tunnel 10 minutes into Chinatown. We get off at exit three off the tunnel and invariably are lucky enough to find free street parking within a couple of blocks. It's a trek up to to Mott Street, but the walk takes about the same amount of time as driving and is no hardship for toddlers accustomed to walking for miles around Hoboken. We usually take one stroller and stay away from Canal Street with its open air stalls and throngs of visitors looking to score knockoff handbags.

Dim sum is available seven days a week but most people go on weekends. The best time to get dim sum is early in the morning since the food is freshest and the largest variety is available. We usually arrive around noon, well in advance of the drop-dead end of dim sum at 3 p.m. but unfortunately late enough that the best dishes are depleted or completely sold out. Shrimp is a staple on the dim sum menu, especially in the classic dumplings (ha gow). I adore the turnip cake and taro root, along with spring rolls and custard tarts (don tot) for dessert. My children enjoy pouring tea and practicing eating with chopsticks. It is especially fun to get dim sum during Chinese New Year, when performers bring oversize lion puppets into the restaurants to dance between tables.

No trip to Chinatown is complete without a visit to Pearl River Mart. Prices have gone up a lot over the last few years as Soho and Chinatown collide, but I am usually able to find a few great bargains like the $30 pure silk pajamas we bought our daughter during our last excursion and $10 embroidered brocade slippers.  

To read more about what makes Kathy Zucker tick, check out her blog at http://hobokenmomcondo.com/momblog and follow her at http://twitter.com/kathyzucker