Dumpling Home
Chinese restaurant · Civic Center ·
Casual spot for soupy xiao long bao, crispy sheng jian bao
Casual spot for soupy xiao long bao, crispy sheng jian bao
"Most nights, particularly during dinner, there are clusters of xiao long bao enthusiasts hovering around the entrance of Dumpling Home like a poorly organized flash mob. If you’d rather use your 45-minute wait efficiently, head around the corner to Anina. The cocktail bar has a huge patio with lots of benches, or you can nurse a spritz inside (get a punch bowl if you’re ambitious)." - julia chen 1
"Dumpling Home is packed every night with groups of friends or families, and the reason is simple. The casual Chinese spot makes some of the best dumplings in the city—like shengjianbao with crispy, golden-brown bottoms, and xiao long bao with translucent skin and flavorful soup. Even if there’s a crowd waiting outside, it won’t take too long before you’re seated and steamers full of dumplings and plates of green onion pancakes land on your table." - julia chen 1, ricky rodriguez, patrick wong
"Two words describe the chicken wings at this Chinese restaurant in Hayes Valley: perfectly balanced. The sticky goodness is a tad spicy but not in a "help, send milk now" sort of way. And the sauce is an ideal combination of salty and sweet. But the crackly skin on each wing is what keeps us ordering them every time we come here." - lani conway, julia chen 1, patrick wong
"You can try the pan-fried baos, poke at the crispy green onion pancakes and sample the hand-pulled noodles, but please, read the room—and the awning that wraps around the building. This casual eatery excels in the delicate art of soup dumplings, which arrive with supple skins and spoonfuls of delicious broth far clearer and more distilled than most. From open till close, chefs in the back wrap and fold everything by hand, and unlike most kitchens that are content to offer just a typical pork variety, fillings here include chicken, beef, and our favorite, a Sichuan-inspired numbing pork.A prime corner location in the Theater District lures in the crowds, who clearly work up an appetite by walking by table after table of bamboo steamers stacked to the sky." - Michelin Inspector
"Dumpling Home is the gold standard. The blueprint. The undisputed titleholder of all things boiled, steamed, and pan-fried. That’s thanks to their expertly folded xiao long bao, green vegetable dumplings that look like sleeping hedgehogs, and shengjianbao that might spray a scary amount of soup across the table when you take a bite. The Hayes Valley spot is the definition of casual—once you sit, you’ll be in and out within 45 minutes. But you’re not here for ambiance. You’re here for the best dumplings in SF." - julia chen 1, ricky rodriguez