Nobody mentioned that Dim Sum is mostly a lunch/brunch thing. Most places serve from mid-morning until 2 or 3.
I prefer carts... because often something comes past that I wouldn't think of ordering... or that I don't know what its name is. Try to get a seat at the traffic side of your table... or your tablemates will get to override your choices.
But if there are just a couple of you, menus are sometimes easier, because then you don't have to wait... and be tempted by items which are ok, and then find yourself too full when the steamed buns ("Bao") finally turn up. Or whatever your favorite is.
I personally prefer steamed to fried. My memory of "big" Three Happiness is that every time I went there, there was too much fried stuff, and the steamed bao never came. Phoenix has a better mix, as far as my personal preferences are concerned.
A good place in the NW suburbs (carts on weekends only, otherwise menu... at least the last time I was there) is Jockey Wok and Rolls, in Hoffman Estates. This place is named after the Jockey Club in Hong Kong... I don't know who suggested the bad pun... but they adopted it after "Jockey Restaurant" didn't translate into Namerican. Or so I heard from the owner.
Other good things to watch for: Shrimp stuffed green pepper or eggplant. Taro cake (a square whitish slice, usually from the same cart as the stuffed pepper). Don't miss sticky rice, which is usually wrapped in lotus leaf (Does somebody wrap it in tea leaves? I want that...!).
---dick
Jockey Wok N Rolls
(found listed as Jockey Restaurant)
1017 N. Roselle Road
Hoffman Estates, IL 60195
(847) 885-0888
(between Golf and Higgins, around the south end of the strip mall)