Dimmer & Summer

196 Smith St., nr. Baltic St.

“It was packed,” says general manager Leo Tan of this narrow dim sum shop’s opening day in July. “We had a full house all day.” The weekend crowds have stuck around, partly out of curiosity about a roving robot-cat server that patrols the dining room (really!) but also, Tan suggests, because there was a conspicuous gap in the market for tableservice dim sum in the area. “I have never had so many people come in to my work,”he recalls, “to say, ‘Welcome to the neighborhood!’”