Beijing
Dumpling
Date of Visit: 8th
September 2013
Ambience
What attracts customers into this
small restaurant is the chefs making the dumplings are on show to the outside
world via the shop front. You can see
that everything is freshly made and the hygiene must be at a good level when
everything is on show to the public. At
least this is what lured us in the first time we visited and ever since, we’ve
not hesitated in returning.
Don’t expect fancy décor at this
place or much of a great atmosphere; go here for the cheap and cheerful food.
Food
We’ve been to this place several
times before and we know the siu lung bao is always good here so we opted for
the original pork ones as well as a spicy pork portion (8 in each
portion). As usual, they were exactly as
siu lung baos should be.. full of juice once you bite into the dumpling but
watch you don’t burn yourself when it explodes in your mouth! Most Chinese restaurants offering this dish
as a dim sum do not prepare it well – the common problems being that all the juice
leaks out as soon as you pick it up (i.e. before it even goes near your mouth)
or if the dumpling skin is too thick.
In the past, we’ve also tried the
crab siu lung boas as well as the chicken ones and whilst they are nice, the
original pork ones are best. The dumplings
in soup is also worth trying.
What we had for mains: Fried Ho
fun with beef and Zha jiang Sauce with noodle. We’ve had the latter before and
I remembered it to be yummy but this time, it lacked spiciness so was plain
sweet and some of the noodles were clumped together. On the other hand, the beef Ho fun was pretty
good – sure it was oily but it wasn’t drenched like you get in most places AND
it didn’t have the burnt taste that you can sometimes get too (Ho fun is
arguably the hardest type of noodles to stir fry as you need a lot of oil to
prevent it from burning).
Service
It was a very busy lunchtime and
we had to wait a bit for a table but once we were sat down, the service was
pretty swift. The great thing is that
they served some of the dumplings in two lots (4 and 4 later) – probably
because they didn’t have enough in the steamer but it worked well for us as
dumplings are best served smoking hot and it would have proved a challenge for
two people to finish 16 dumplings before it got cold!
Summary
Tasty dumplings at Beijing
Dumpling is well worth a visit in itself – meals here are always cheap,
cheerful and satisfying and service is always quick. What more can you ask for in a casual
meal? We will be back!
They need to open something
similar in the city instead of the pontsy dumplings at Now near Liverpool St
station. If anybody can recommend good
dumplings in the City, let me know…
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