daekr

.
.

PDF Document was moved: https://bit.ly/2ulojle

.
.

We came here today for lunch and was very excited to try it. We got here a little after they opened and there was only one other group in there. Service was average, they’re more comfortable talking to you if you speak Mandarin. We ordered the deep fry pork belly, Chinese donuts, chicken rice noodle soup, pork corn dumplings, and the pork shrimp dumplings. Ithe food came out very staggered. The Chinese donuts came out first. The chinese donuts were more like you tiao (only know how to say it in Cantonese) where you soak them in soy bean milk (or my favorite is to eat with congee). We did not order soy bean milk, but kind of wish we had at that point. I was not a fan of the donuts as they were very fried with little of the spongy bread body to go with it. It was like eating a long chip. The deep fried pork belly was okay. Kind of plain? The spices that came on the side helped. The dumplings were good, but very average. Something you could make at home. The pork and corn was interesting, I liked them more then the pork shrimp ones which had a slightly odd flavor to me. The chicken rice noodle soup came out way later then everything else, to the point where we were kind of full. I really enjoyed the chicken noodle soup. It honestly tasted like a more gourmet Campell’s chicken noodle soup. Even the noodles almost had the same time but obviously a little better. I enjoyed it although the chicken was super dry. Food prices were average, but I definitely wouldn’t go out of my way for this place. The food was just okay. It didn’t impress me as much as I was hoping it would. Service was fine, the lady (who I believe might also be the manager/owner) very kindly gave us some coupons to return. When we left, the tables started filling up and getting very busy.

Mama’s Kitchen Taiwanese Food – Menu with Prices – 10820 Abbotts Bridge Rd, Duluth

My absolute favorite ever since I moved to John’s Creek. They have not disappointed me yet! (Located inside johns creek hmart food court, alllll the way in the corner) Seafood noodle soup (spicy or not spicy) – delicious and portion is pretty big! All their noodles soups a pretty good. My fav is the seafood. They also have beef, pork and preserved veggie and with option of regular noodle or rice noodle. Fried pork chop on rice – portion is huge and pork chop is seasoned very well. Very savory dish Boiled pork dumplings – very flavorful and bursting with juice and meat inside Taiwanese style spicy boiled fish – slightly pricier than their other menu items, but worth it. Very aromatic and delicious Taiwanese rice noodle (curry or regular) – also a must try item. It’s just plain good. Chicken nuggets: ok, I might have lied when I said I haven’t been disappointed. I got the nuggets once and found it to be very dry. Maybe over fried? But it’s ok, I’m willing to overlook it because everything else I ordered was great. A lot more items to try on the menu and they have a vegetarian menu too! I’m actually sitting here waiting on my fish dumplings and noodle soup as I write this….

Olympic Noodle – Menu with Prices – 4008 W Olympic Blvd, Los Angeles

Specialty: Dak kal gook soo (sliced noodle soup with chicken) I first learned about Olympic Noodle from one of Jonathan Gold’s articles (https://www.laweekly.com/jonathan-golds-60-korean-dishes-every-angeleno-should-know/) and I never had a chance to visit here because the restaurant always closes on Sunday. Few weeks ago I was about to drive back home from The Original Farmers Market and I stopped by Koreatown for a quick dinner. There’s a parking lot behind the restaurant, but one of the cars blocked the parking entrance so I ultimately just parked on the street. Service was pretty average and each table was served with pickled daikon and a giant stone pot of kimchi. I am a big fan of their sweet and savory kimchi and their pickled daikon was pretty good too (not super vinegary). Menu: There are 12 different noodle options, but their signature item is #1 Korean chicken noodle soup. I also ordered steamed dumplings because it was one of the Yelp’s highlights. *** #1 Korean Chicken Noodle Soup ($12.80): Noodle had somewhat of a firm texture and chicken pieces were not super tender, but broth was very savory and portion was generous! #27 Steamed Dumplings (12 pieces – $10.99): Dumplings were not super juicy, but each dumpling was jammed pack with pork and chives fillings and flavors were on the point. *** I still think chicken noodle soup from Hangari Bajirak Kalguksu is a bit better, but I would totally visit Olympic Noodle for the following reasons: (1) no waiting line, (2) easy parking, (3) yummy kimchi, and (3) solid noodle soup & dumplings with generous portion sizes.

Joojak Restaurant – Menu with Prices – 3337 Kingsway, Vancouver

It’s been a year or two since my first visit to Joojak Restaurant. Been back twice recently. They’re a Northern Chinese hole in the wall spot right next door to Sushi Aji. The inside is small with only 5 tables but service is sweet and run by two ladies who run the front. Nice that they bring you out water and hot tea. The menu is split into Xian specialties, noodle soups, boiled/fried dumplings, wonton soup, soup, vegetables, main dishes, congee and special combos. Trip #1 We dropped in on a Tuesday evening (around 7:00pm) and it was busy. – Xian pork burger (#1) ($5.50) – pork was moist and tender. Dip in vinegar sauce for some extra flavour. – Xian lamb burger (#2) ($5.95) – lamb had a decent cumin rub on it. – Xian cold noodle (#3) ($8.50) – with gluten, bean sprouts and sliced cucumbers. This is legit! Love the springy bite from the noodles. Everyone had a bowl of li piang on their table. – Beef & noodle soup (#10) ($9.95) – broth is plain and simple. Beef slices were thin and tasty. – Dumplings in spicy sour soup (#23) ($11.99) – you choose from four different dumplings; we opted for the pork and chive. You get a dozen dumplings with a solid meat to skin ratio. The wrapper was excellent, broth was well balanced and seaweed was a welcome addition. – Steamed chicken with chili sauce (#36) ($10.99) – this is their best (aka. signature) dish. The chicken is incredibly tender, moist and flavourful. Love the sauce underneath. There’s even bits of pickled vegetable. Wish they gave you a bowl of rice to soak up all the sauce. Trip #2 We dropped in on a Saturday (around noon) and were the only ones there. – Xian pork burger (#1)( $5.50) – our friends ordered one to share. – Green onion pancake (#9) ($4.50) – it’s cut into 8 pieces. A little small but tasty. – Xian cold noodle (#4) ($8.95) – this one is with gluten, sliced cucumbers, bean sprouts and sesame paste. Solid. – Hand pulled noodle with hot chili oil (#13) ($8.95) – first time trying their Biang Biang noodles; good bite but there weren’t a ton of noodles. – Boiled dumpling with pork & bok choy (#19) ($9.95 for 12) – we opted for ours to be boiled. Dumplings are homemade and the pork filling is excellent. – Steamed chicken with chili sauce (#36) ($10.99) – always a must order. Their chicken still reigns supreme. Another solid Northern Chinese spot. Will be back to try their larger main dishes next time.

Foodie Spot – Menu with Prices – 1032 Florin Rd, Sacramento

The food is awful. I guess I should’ve realized what I was in for when I saw the name. I even actually detoured as I was on my way to L&L but then noticed that this place is a Chinese restaurant (thought it would be a sandwich shop given the non-descriptive name). I like giving new Chinese restaurants a try so I headed on in. While I’m not sorry I gave them a shot, I AM sorry that the food was so bad. My go-to items to try out Chinese restaurants are their wor wonton soup and house fried rice (wor wonton soup because I love wor wonton soup and house fried rice because while I also love fried rice, house fried rice usually has a variety of protein so it’s a good way to try them all out at the same time). After learning that the house fried rice doesn’t include pork (and I was, mostly, ordering it for my husband, who loves pork and isn’t so fond of beef), I decided to order BBQ pork fried rice instead. I also got the wor wonton soup and a dinner combo of broccoli beef with pork fried rice (which, apparently, is just their shortcut way of saying BBQ pork fried rice). First, the wor wonton soup, while the broth was actually tasty, had a few pieces of chicken and limp leaves of napa cabbage, in addition to the wontons. That’s it. I’ve never had a wor wonton soup that was so bare; it seemed more like a wonton soup. I wasn’t impressed with the utter lack of anything else. The broccoli beef was watery and came with some rather light-colored, mushy pieces of beef. The broccoli was cooked nicely — not overdone. The beef didn’t seem to have much flavor. The fried rice was not good and rather tasteless. The small-diced BBQ pork didn’t seem to have any bearing on the rice. The restaurant was devoid of customers when I walked in so the counterperson only had me to wait on. She was quite friendly and did carry my food out to me when it was ready but, unfortunately, that’s not enough to render a positive review. The food was simply terrible. The good customer service and the fact that there’s actually one other Chinese restaurant with even worse food earned the second star (Panda Wok at the other end of Florin has the worst Chinese food I’ve ever had; however, the one time I went in there, it was packed with customers and a long line so I guess they have their own cadre of fans of their horrible food).

Sister Liu’s Kitchen – Menu with Prices – namu旁边, 5504 Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd #103, Durham

As the daughter of Chinese immigrants, I’ve eaten a lot of dumplings in my life, and let me tell you, this place is the real deal. Everything is made from scratch and served up on Dixie plates by cheery Chinese women – kind of makes me homesick. The dumplings may seem pricey given the lack of ambiance in the place (basically a teeny storefront and two card tables set up outside), but they’re packed full of flavor. Plus they’re made with handmade wrappers (not the storebought wrappers I rely on when I make dumplings at home), which add a wonderful springy chewiness to the dumpling eating experience. My husband also tried and loved their “beef burger”. It sort of looks like a burger but tastes far better. The “bun” is actually a Chinese bing (pan-fried flatbread), and the “burger” was chopped braised beef. If you’ve ever ordered beef shank as part of a “cold plate” appetizer in a Chinese restaurant, it’s that kind of meat. I also asked about the noodles on the menu – they’re freshly handmade, and I’m looking forward to trying that the next time I visit. Meanwhile, I’ve got a bag of their shrimp, pork, and cabbage dumplings in the freezer, which I can’t wait to cook up!

Peking Express Menu with Prices 514 S Van Dorn St, Alexandria

Peking Express, which was once known as Ho King, is a small Chinese carry-out/delivery place off of Van Dorn. They offer a full menu of appetizers, soups, noodle dishes, chicken/beef/pork/vegetarian options, and even some Thai dishes. The hubs and I ordered some late-night Chinese: Hot & Sour Soup (this was for the hubs only; he said it was just okay); Sesame Cold Noodles (the sesame sauce was way too sweet, and there wasn’t enough to dress the big amount of noodles); Spicy Tangy Dumplings – Szechuan Style (stuffed with ground pork with a peanut butter dressing and topped with green onions; these were little steamed wontons coated with a sugary sweet peanut dressing – not at all spicy and not at all savory; also, the dumplings were also a little cold); Crab Rangoon (the wontons were more on the chewier end, but they were filled with a lot of the cream cheese/crab mixture; a little less thick and more watered down); Mongolian Beef (which comes with white rice or fried rice (brown rice is an extra charge); this tasted okay, but it was a lot of onions; the sauce could have been more thicker, as there was plenty of liquid at the bottom); and, Chicken Fried Rice (the hubs was a total fan of this – light had a good combination of veggies and strips of chicken). They have a delivery option, but we went to go pick it up. Most of the items seemed to be made to-order. There are a few tables and chairs to eat, but most locals seem to just do carry-out/delivery. Plenty of parking in the plaza lot. +Chicken Fried Rice +convenient online ordering system +most food made to-order +delivery available +plenty of parking in shared plaza lot

Shanghai Dumpling House Menu with Prices 37 Biltmore Ave, Asheville

Opened in August 2019 in the space occupied by Doc Chey’s Noodle House for 15 years, Shanghai Dumpling House has big shoes to fill. Doc Chey’s was highly successful and reportedly closed only because the operators, who still own the building and an interest in two Doc Chey’s restaurants in Atlanta, were tired of the day-to-day hassle of running a popular restaurant. Based on my initial visit, early indications are that Shanghai will have to make some menu changes and up its game if it wants the kind of success Doc Chey’s enjoyed. I am always happy when a new Asian food restaurant opens here, because Asheville is weak on nearly every Asian cuisine, but unfortunately Shanghai Dumpling didn’t live up to our expectations. First, some positives. We arrived around at around 6 pm on a Friday, and there were still a lot of vacant tables. (Within the next hour, it filled up some but was never super busy.) Service by our waitperson, Sharon, was very friendly, and the dishes came out in a timely manner. While the layout of the restaurant hasn’t changed much from the Doc Chey’s days, the atmosphere is pleasant, and I liked the murals (one is a black and white sketch of Chinese and Western celebrities). Auspiciously, the first dish we ordered, the signature soup dumplings ($9), was very good. A little hard to eat, but flavorful, and I like being able to make your own sauce (soy, ginger and vinegar). But the food went downhill from there. Our order of deep fried rock shrimp ($8) had delicious light golden shrimp, but the dish was spoiled by the mayo goop that was poured all over it. Suggestion: order the sauce on the side or without any sauce. Likewise, our calamari ($8) looked good, but in fact was tough and chewy. For a dumpling house, there aren’t many dumplings on the menu. There are only four basic kinds of dumplings on the menu — soup, fried (pork, chicken, shrimp or vegetable), won tons with spicy sauce and pan fried pork buns, which I don’t consider dumplings, although others may. Red Ginger has many more types of dumplings on their dim sum/tapas menu than Shanghai. And I would say the quality and atmosphere at Red Ginger are much higher than at Shanghai Dumpling House, at about the same price points. The two entrée dishes we tried, Kung Pao chicken ($15) and sautéed green beens with garlic and dried peppers ($11) were extremely bland. We couldn’t see any garlic or peppers in the green beans and ended up taking nearly all of them home. The Kung Pao chicken was virtually tasteless. I can make a better, livelier version of this dish using those little packets of Kung Pao seasoning you buy in a grocery. Entrées at Shanghai are $11 to $25. With three Tsingtao beers ($4 each) our dinner for three came to around $75 before tip. Shanghai Dumpling House had four local beers on tap, some bottled beers and a few wines. There were no mixed drinks, but perhaps the restaurant hasn’t gotten its full liquor license yet. I imagine this place will do okay for a while due to its excellent location on Biltmore Avenue, but for repeat local business and long-term success I believe the owners will have to make some menu changes, adding more dumplings and coming up with some more sophisticated entrées and other dishes. Strategically, the owners are going to have to decide whether this is a mass market low-end Chinese spot (one of the owners operates Shogun Buffet, I understand) or an interesting, more upmarket place like Red Ginger. I wish Shanghai Dumpling House well, but just based on our first experience, we probably wouldn’t come back and certainly would not be regulars.

Pho Cuu Long Restaurant – Menu with Prices – 757 St Mary’s Rd, Winnipeg

*looks at the other review* Okay… Anyway, I ate here recently and enjoyed it. One of my mom’s friends recently dined here and highly recommended the beef stew noodle soup, so that was what I went with. Their beef stew noodle soup is pretty unique. Instead of a rice noodle or egg noodle option, they put both in the soup. It was definitely an interesting take, and the taste was really good too. The broth in particular was excellent, one of the best beef stew broths I’ve ever had. The ambience is quite modern and somewhat screams Northern Chinese restaurant more than a Vietnamese restaurant. The outside doesn’t look anything special though aside from the nine dragons symbol (Cuu Long loosely translates to Kowloon, a region in Hong Kong). Service? Yeah they’re a little scramble-y…but with these establishments I never expect much for service. Definitely will return.

Yang’s Dumplings – Menu with Prices – 196 Quincy St, Boston

I order food for the workplace on the regular, and I have been trying to change it up lately. I didn’t know much about Yang’s Dumplings, but given that it was Chinese New Year earlier this week, I wanted dumplings bad and gave Yang’s a chance. I ordered ~300 dumplings for my colleagues, and they loved it! Many of them even asked for the restaurant afterwards. The dumplings are fresh and hot upon delivery, and they taste homemade. No surprise there, given that it’s a family business. Also, my brief interactions with them have all been very pleasant. For large parties, you can order the “Taste of Everything”, which consists of 200 steamed veggie, chicken, pork, and shrimp dumplings (50 each). There’s the “Plate of Everything Platter”, which has 420 dumplings, but if you have a smaller crowd, there’s the “Bite of Everything Platter”, which has 80 dumplings. (There are more options if you order through ezCater.com.) Delivery is prompt, punctual, and pretty cheap. Tl;dr – Switch up your catering with dumplings! Yang’s delivers in more ways than one.

Empire Chinese Kitchen – Menu with Prices – 575 Congress St, Portland

Let’s get the bad out of the way: I myself do NOT like the Shu Mai dumplings. I don’t know what else to say other than both the taste and texture are gross to me. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s go on to the great: the servers! Boy howdy, these folks hustle and they are very friendly, ready with recommendations, and pay attention to you at just the right level. As the food comes out, the bring it so you get it fresh–that does mean some folks might not have food at the same time to start eating, but if you know it going in, it’s not an issue. Things I l-o-v-e at Empire include the ORANGE BEEF. It’s a starter that can be a whole meal for just one person. It’s tangy, lightly spicy, and full of flavor. Your tongue will be tickled with joy eating it. I also recommend the Shanghai soup dumplings, spicy pork belly buns, and Singapore rice noodles. Truly, it’s a little pricey compared to plain old Chinese take out. Then again, the superior quality of the food and service are what you are paying for–and it’s worth it.

Lanzhou hand-pulled noodles – Menu with Prices – 935 Arch St, Philadelphia

The food here was mediocre but the service was really disappointing. My husband and I stopped by early on Wednesday right before lunchtime. There was only one table of customers in the restaurant and no server or host to be found. After a few minutes of just standing there awkwardly, someone finally came out from the back kitchen to seat us. She seemed bored and disinterested in us as customers to be honest. After looking at the menu for a bit (this was our first time trying this place) we placed our order with another server who came out from the back – this new server seemed much friendlier and energetic. My husband ordered their oxtail hand pulled noodles soup; I ordered the “Chinese hamburger” and pork and chive dumplings. I’ve always heard about these “Chinese burgers” but have never seen it on a menu in Philly and was excited to try it. For those who are unfamiliar these so called “burgers” are just steamed rice buns stuffed with a braised meat (beef, pork or lamb…this place didn’t offer a choice though). It’s then grilled a bit, kind of like a panini, to give it some structure. For my first time eating this, I thought it was ok. The meat wasn’t super seasoned so I ended up adding chili oil, soy sauce and a touch of black vinegar which made it taste much better! My husband thought his oxtail noodle soup was ok – nothing spectacular. The last dish to come out was the pork and chive dumplings. These were the worst things I have ever eaten. The filling tasted like cardboard. I couldn’t even finish one. After we had had enough, we wanted to just get our check and pay…well server #1 was too busy watching TV to even notice us…for a very long time! We didn’t get checked on during our meal and we could barely get her attention to pay. Overall, I was not a fan and will not be returning.

The Magic Noodle ??å?«æ?¹ – Menu with Prices – 5829 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh

I came here with my father during dinner time and ordered the number 1 (house dry noodle with minced pork), shrimp soy fried rice, scallion pancake, stir fried greens, and intestines. I opted against getting my own customizable “magic” noodle bowls, so I can’t speak to that experience. However, I remember being a little confused and overwhelmed by the organization of the menu. The vegetables in particular were under the stir fry section and hard to notice. Regardless the food came out pretty quickly, maybe 10 minutes wait max. The service was good. Our waitress was friendly and kind and helped to accommodate us when we moved from outside to inside seating. I also noticed her helping other customers when the other waitress couldn’t understand their questions. She helped to clarify that the restaurant did offer gluten free options aka rice noodles. The food was okay. The noodle dish was kind of spicy for me, which I found kind of disappointing since I can’t tolerate spice well and had found no indication of this on the menu. The soy fried rice and scallion pancake were decent and the stir fried veggies refreshing. The intestines were a new experience for me and had a good amount of fat, but I don’t think I’m a fan of intestines in general. Overall it was nice to try the food, but I’m not sure if I would come again. Maybe I would return to try the create your own noodle option.