Kyle W.
Yelp
I went here with some friends after my friend sent me a reel about this place, which is a dumpling restaurant from the owners of 85C Bakery. Given it is a fairly new restaurant and is somewhat viral on social media, wait can be pretty long. Peak times can be over 1+ hr waitlist, but when we went at a relatively off peak time around 2:30pm, we still had to wait 25 min to be seated. Fortunately, we leveraged the Yelp waitlist to our advantage so we waited minimally in person.
We tried the A2 chives & pork pan fried dumpling, C1 pork xiao long bao, F1 beef roll, and G1 minced salmon and chicken fried rice. The chives and pork pan fried dumpling was really good - there was also quite some juice inside so if you eat fast, some will get squeezed out! I liked that there is a thin sheet layer of crispiness under the dumplings. The xiao long bao was also really delicious. Beef roll had minimal sauce which is good for less salt, but it did not carry as much flavor as I had hoped. I would skip the beef roll in favor for more dumplings. The fried rice was good, a bit oily, but flavorful and well executed. I'd still prefer the dumplings which, after all, is their specialty.
Service is minimal as expected for a Chinese restaurant, but it was annoying to have to even flag down a host when the Yelp waitlist is ready, as no one literally went to the host stand area to check people in. That gave a poor first impression of the restaurant, for an otherwise really delicious dumpling restaurant in Rowland Heights.