Forgive the PG-13 tone this column will take, but when it comes to describing dim sum, it's best to invoke everyone's favorite metaphor.

Dim sum — the Cantonese brunch served from rolling carts — is a love affair, you see. It starts lustily when you are young and have nothing but appetite. She is all over you, steamy and eager to please, with bau (steamed buns) that are soft and warm in your hands, and har gau (shrimp crescents) with their pink contents shining through satin-sheer wraps. There are sweets — indiscriminate sweets like flaky egg tarts and mango pudding — to pop in your mouth before you go for another round of salty.

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Then you learn she has a freaky side. You crave sumptuous dumplings and she offers chicken feet and duck web. OK. Anything once. Also, she has no self-control and, as you find, neither do you. You push away from each feast overfed, reeling and exhausted.

And then one day ... ick. This isn't healthy. Sloppy fun, but always the same. You're a guy, and you flee.

Can you recapture the magic? You try, but the problem with dim sum restaurants is that they go up- and downhill more than a San Francisco cable car. Restaurants change chefs, or owners, or both. The dim sum parlor that was a den of lusty satisfaction a few years ago has become a dingy room where servers wheel around warmed-over food.

In Atlanta, my sense is that the best dim sum in town boils down to the battle of the pearls. That would be East Pearl in Duluth and Oriental Pearl in Chamblee.

When friends suggested a dim sum brunch, I immediately recommended East Pearl. As it is far from my house, I don't often go there. But I recall it being revelatory when it first opened in 2005. I was coming out of an out-of-love period with dim sum and was immediately seduced by the evident freshness of the dumplings, which all burst with juice. Even the taro puffs (a misnomer as these ovals are as heavy as grenades) seemed unusually crisp and lacy with flyaway bits of pastry.

So we returned on a busy Sunday and snagged a primo table in the main room close to the kitchen door where the carts emerged laden. This time I was struck by the unique chunky style of many of the dumplings. The siu mai, normally akin to wrapped meatballs elsewhere, here featured pea-size chunks of pork. Same for the coarse shrimp that tumbled from the har gau wrappers.

But I also noted that the dumpling wrappers were thick and doughy and fried items cold and tough. The dim sum version of shrimp toast — a length of Chinese cruller split and stuffed with shrimp paste — was like rawhide for cats. I wasn't feeling it. That didn't stop me from stuffing my face, and I left the table feeling spent but not satisfied. What did I use to love so much about dim sum?

Out of curiosity, I found myself a couple of weeks later at Oriental Pearl, a restaurant that was once the city's premier dim sum parlor but that had suffered an unfortunate interregnum as an all-you-can-eat buffet. I had heard it was back.

The once-dingy interior has been completely redone so the issue of hygiene no longer bothered me. Given that I visited on a weekday, the offerings were plentiful, the most compelling of which were a selection of dumplings being wheeled around on a gas-flamed griddle. Huge, crisp-bottomed pork crescents — like Japanese gyoza on steroids — came three to the order with a splash of red vinegar. They were tasty, but it was the fragrant, garlicky chive dumplings that really helped me get my dim sum on. It took forever for the steamed-cart lady to take notice of our table, and once she did we kept to an order of pork buns with a dry filling that needed some saucy sloppiness. Not great. But the tofu-skin rolls looked and smelled awfully good, as did the steamed whitefish balls. I could easily have given in to the urge to get one of everything.

I resisted. Older, wiser, I knew where this was going.

East Pearl: 1810 Liddell Lane, Duluth. 678-380-0899.

Oriental Pearl: 5399 New Peachtree Road, Chamblee. 770-986-9866.