After watching a very short early afternoon parade on Argyle St. in Chicago, the thing to do is cross Broadway and eat dim sum at Furama. The laughing buddhas encourage you to do so when you get there.

Been a while since we’d had any dim sum, not sure how long. I also couldn’t remember the first time I’d ever had it. Not that that matters to anyone, even me, but I did wonder. It might have been at Furama more than 30 years ago, during one of my periodic visits to Chicago before I moved there. I know I was familiar with it by the time I had dim sum with friends in Boston on January 1, 1990.

I read in the Tribune that dim sum out of carts is considered passe these days. “When you go out for dim sum now in Chicago, after your server sets down your first pot of tea, you’ll scan other tables to see fellow diners reach with chopsticks into steamer baskets and small plates, then you’ll notice something missing: the carts,” Louisa Chu wrote last year.

“The iconic steaming silver serving carts were once considered signs of traditional dim sum, the Chinese weekend brunch where families gathered to share food and stories. But the customs and meal itself are changing, locally and globally.”

That’s mildly disappointing. The carts are important to the experience. Luckily, Furama still does it that way, and so we enjoyed the various things you get from dim sum carts: ha gow, siu mai, cheong fun, lo mai gai, und so weiter. One thing I’ve never acquired a taste for: fried chicken feet, fung zau.

Afterward, we went a block to the north to Ba Le Sandwich Shop to buy takeout Vietnamese food for later consumption. A dragon, maybe to mark the Tet, greeted customers.

Whenever we’re in the neighborhood, we visit Ba Le for banh mi sandwiches or other good things, since everything there is good, and not very expensive. When we lived in the neighborhood, we used to go there too. One spring day in 1998, when we took a very small Lilly on her first picnic in Lincoln Park, we stopped at Ba Le for provisions.