Scott T.
Yelp
I've been chomping at the bit to make the trip out to this fabled made-to-order dumpling house ever since I first read about it a month or two ago. Any place that's touted as having the best [insert Chinese food here] in the SGV (and therefore most likely in all of SoCal), shoots up to the top of my to-do list, with a bullet. Whether it's Savoy for their Hainan Chicken or Sea Harbor for their dim sum... hell, if anyone has any others, please: message me.
Anyway, I think most Chinese folks do require some real Chinese food at least every once in a while, just to keep their bodies properly calibrated, like clocks need to be wound or plants need to be watered or dogs need to be walked. In SoCal, that means speeding down the 10E to Alhambra or Monterey Park or wherever. And I hadn't had dumplings in a while; my inner Buddha belly was losing its smile. (I have no idea what that means...)
On to the meal: everything we had was incredibly fresh and steaming hot. Within the first five minutes of them being set down on our table, every pork and leek zheng jiao I touched with my chopsticks erupted with juice. The shrimp and tofu shui jiao were a little TOO fragile, often falling apart long before reaching my mouth. But the best thing we ordered was definitely the double mushroom pork bao. They were wonderfully hot and had just the right amount of flavor, the pork encased perfectly in a fragrant bun, not too soft and not too firm.
I am docking one big star, though (and tempted to drop two), for the following reasons:
First, they refused to pan fry my dumplings. That sucks, especially since I've been craving guo tie for like a week now, it's right there on their menu, and it wasn't even a busy night. The guy said to me in Chinese that they "didn't have pan fried dumplings" tonight, but my Bad Chinese Service Translator sent that back to me as "we don't feel like making them."
Second, when I tried to order cong you bing, they "didn't have" that either. Really? You don't "have" cong you bing?? I mean, I know this place isn't well-known for its cong you bing, and it was dinner time, but come on. I'm not asking for a Peking duck. And then, as if anticipating my next move, the guy said they were also out of niu rou juan bing. You wanna know how to harsh a Chinese man's mellow? Tell him you're out of both cong you bing and niu rou juan bing! Ta ma de!!
There was a white couple sitting a couple tables away, and I paid careful attention to how the server treated them. If he had been more forthcoming with the English-speaking patrons than with the Chinglish-speaking ones, I would've dropped two more stars without even thinking about it. But no, he was his typical surly self to them, too, and I went back to concentrating on my dumplings.
All in all, the stuff we did get was amazingly fresh and tasty. The water dumplings were a little too eager to gleefully self-destruct in a soupy mess, but the buns were so amazingly good that I can forgive that. I would happily have given five stars but for their rejecting my request for guo tie and their inability to deliver two staples of Chinese comfort food, especially when I was being so well-mannered. In days of old, people might've drawn their swords for that kind of dishonorable behavior (all I'm doing is dropping stars on Yelp).
I left pretty happy, however, and walked out carrying what I expect will be some very tasty leftovers. The clocks are wound, the plants have been watered, the dogs are happy and my Buddha belly is smiling serenely once more.