We missed eating out here last year, so I was looking forward to finally eating here. It’s all about the dumplings here so we were going to definitely try a lot of those.
We had ordered cucumber salad, hot & sour soup, shrimp fried rice, green beans and bunch of dumplings of course! The first thing to come out was the first to come out was the Truffle & Kurobota Pork XLB. This is their “regular” pork XLB with the addition of some italian truffle. I guess they wanted to start us off with a bang. It was delicious, from the broth to the seasoned pork with the truffle flavor coming through. The dough was thin and with their “signature Golden Ratio of 18 folds”.
Then came the cucumber salad. This was nicely presented stacked in a little pyramid. The cucumber had a nice crunch and just a touch of chili gave it a little bit of heat. We also ordered the hot & sour soup. The presentation was interesting with some of the seasoning (pepper, green onion, chili oil) sitting on top separately/deconstructed rather than already mixed in. It was also flavorful and with a bit of “hot” as you would expect from those seasonings.
Then came a series of dumplings…first was the Kimchi & Kurobota Pork Dumplings. These were distinctive because of their light orange hued dough. We ordered these of course because of the kimchi which made for a different take on a pork dumpling. It was an enjoyable and tasty combo. Then the Chicken XLB, Crab & Kurobota Pork XLB, and the “regular” Kurobota Pork XLB (so basically we ordered all 3 of the regular XLB plus one specialty one) and the Kurobota Pork Buns. The chicken XLB came with a little yellow chicken cutout and the crab one came with a little brown/orange crab cutout to identify them. All the XLB had flavorful broth and very distinctive and forward with their respective ingredients…the chicken had a strong chicken flavor, the crab one had a strong crab flavor, and the pork of course tasted like pork, sort of a baseline XLB. Really all were fantastic with perhaps the pork taking a slight backseat given that we had already had the pork and truffle XLB.
The pork bun was a not quite what we were expecting. In our minds we all were thinking BBQ pork buns, but these were just straight pork buns and the meat inside was sort of like having a pork meatball in the middle of a bun. It was good, but I do prefer a BBQ pork bun and esp. a pan friend one like we had at Dumpling Home recently.
We were seriously starting to slow down, but of course the food kept coming. Andrea had also ordered the Shrimp & Kurobota Pork Spicy Wontons which would turn out to be her favorite. She loves spicy dishes and the spice was nicely executed (flavorful, not overly hot) with some delicious wontons. She ate most of this dish on her own!
The shrimp fried rice and the green beans came out. The shrimp fried rice was a lighter version of fried rice without any soy or sesame oil which was nice. The green beans were also quite good…crisp and with a nice garlic sautee, no too greasy or heavy.
We were pretty full at this point. Andrea ordered a Sea Salt Creme Iced (black) Tea and our waitperson did talk us into the Chocolate & Mochi XLB for dessert. We also had this little dish of Sea Salt Creme (like in the drink) that we weren’t sure if it was to add more to the tea or to use as dipping for the XLB. Andrea’s tea was sweet enough and we used it for dipping with the XLB and it was glorious. First, even w/o the Sea Salt Creme, the XLB had a rich dark chocolate flavor with a bit of the chewiness from the dough. When this was dipped into the creme, OMFG. We managed to find enough room in our bellies for sure.
I didn’t realive there were 177 DTFs in the world and I can’t believe it took me so long to finally dine at one!!
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