‘The perfect little vessel’: Tricked-up dim sims are the hot pub snack this winter

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Victoria’s most iconic street food is enjoying a new lease of life from the Melbourne CBD to the Wimmera.

Frank Sweet

Tradies revere them. Bedfellows fear them. They’re the Melbourne-born meat treat that could. And right now – like the majestic corpse flower in full, fragrant bloom – they’re evolving.

Kangaroo dim sims. Beef ragu dim sims. Apple and cinnamon dim sims served with cream. Dim sims loaded into hot dog buns with bacon and onion. Free from the cabbage shackles that stifled their ambition, in 2025 the dim sim is a galaxy of salted possibility, its skin a blistered golden canvas.

Created in Melbourne, now loved all over Australia.

Conceived by William Chen Wing Young, father of chef and author Elizabeth Chong, dim sims take their inspiration from everyone’s favourite yum cha trolley mainstay, the venerable siu mai. Sensing an opportunity for a supersized smash-hit, he pumped them with cabbage, suffused them with white pepper, and unleashed them on the hungry masses of wartime Melbourne. A legacy was born,and it would remain largely unchanged for 80-odd years.

Enter the likes of Jo Barrett, The Age Good Food Guide Chef of the Year 2024. With sustainability close to her heart, Barrett led now-closed Lorne restaurant Little Picket to a hat in 2023, before swinging focus to making pies and dim sims with feral proteins such as venison and wild boar under the Wildpie banner. Carlton gastropub The Lincoln has Barrett’s dimmies on the menu.

“We’re selling a few hundred a week, easy,” says pub owner Iain Ling, “and that’s only increasing.” He reckons the dining public’s familiarity with the dim sim makes it more open to trying something a little more tricked up, like wild boar.

Bartender Manny Platsis with The Lincoln’s wild boar dim sims and beetroot relish.

“They’re porky without being pork. And if you want to get into the ethical kind of stuff, it’s reducing a pest which damages woodland and eats stuff that’s meant for native animals.”

Known for its British-leaning pub fare, The Lincoln eschews popular dim sim accompaniments like soy sauce for something closer to home, styling them instead with a condiment he considers to be more “pub-esque”: beetroot relish.

Meanwhile, a food truck named Dimmie Den was spotted recently outside Southern Cross Station, strapped with a menu that spanned half the globe. James Barr co-owns the truck with old friends Steve Lolatgis and Zig Van Der Sluys. The idea came from Lolatgis, who had “a persistent curiosity around the dimmie” through school. “He would say ‘Why doesn’t it come in different flavours? It’s the perfect little vessel!’” says Barr.

The Greek-inspired dimmie has been particularly popular for the trio. Named the Dim Simos, it’s an Acropolis-rattling combination of slow-cooked lamb shoulder, lemon, feta, olive oil and saganaki. There’s also the Italian Don Sim, rich with beef ragu, red wine and parmesan; the Mexidim, brimming with jalapeno hellfire; and even an interpolation of the apple pie called the Cinnadim: a sweet dimmie rolled in cinnamon sugar and served with Chantilly cream.

The Dimmie Den also makes a dimmie dog: a hot dog roll loaded with original dimmies that’s even won the approval of 3AW breakfast host Russell Howcroft. Speak to anyone in the state’s far west, however, and they’ll tell you that treatment of the dimmie is nothing new.

“We put them in a hot dog roll with bacon and onion and sell them at the Gun Club for five bucks,” says Tom Hardman. He’s the ex-president of the Field and Game Association in Natimuk, a town of roughly 500 an hour’s drive from the South Australian border.

Kangaroo dimmies at Bear’s Wine Bar in North Melbourne.

“Every sporting club has a steamer full of dim sims,” he says, suggesting the dimmie roll was a virtual fait accompli. “But the first place I heard of them was the Haven General Store”.

That store is owned by Peter McFarlane. He’s been serving dimmie rolls there for more than three decades, and the tradies of the Wimmera can’t get enough.

“Just a normal hot dog roll, throw three dimmies in it, cream cheese, soy sauce, mustard, tomato sauce; whatever you want,” he says. “People come to town, get in the line and say, ‘What did that bloke just have?’ No one’s ever heard of them!”