Luscious Dumplings - San Gabriel, CA

This is my third visit at this restaurant and first time eating here. The first time when slave girl and I came during a late afternoon, it was closed. The second time we came, they ran out of all the dumplings and only had noodles to serve. Well, since they are famous for dumplings, I didn't want to waste my first impression on the noodles. So 3rd time was the charm and I was really excited to finally able to try this place.

Cute

We ordered beef noodle soup, beef brisket noodle soup, chives with pork dumplings, cabbage with shrimp and pork dumplings, and pan fried pork dumplings. If you order a combo deal, you can upgrade the noodles to a large size with $2 extra.

Spicy oil has sesame seeds in it, that's new...

The broth of the noodles to our surprise was really good. Unlike most beef noodle soup out there, this one used chicken broth. It's subtle but tasty, just all around good flavor. Beef itself however was a bit dry and I would suggest to get the beef brisket instead of beef for better meat texture.

Beef brisket noodle soup

Beef noodle soup

As for dumplings, it was just not good at all. Inside filling of the dumplings was very tasty and didn't gimp on the ingredients, especially the cabbage with shrimp and pork. However, in order to be called a good dumpling, other than the filling, the casing is equally important. In our case, first 5 dumplings of the casing was not even fully cooked. Our server was nice and took those back and made us another plate. Our second plate had similar issue but not as bad so we didn't say anything.

Cabbage with shrimp and pork dumpling

Chives with pork dumpling

The pan fried ones suffered worse. The filling was freaking delicious, but the casing was stuck on top of each other and broken apart when we tried to pick it up. The texture was not crispy but rather doughy. It was very disappointing truly.

They are super glued to each other

The filling was damn tasty

I am not trying to make this place look bad, but they really should be called luscious meatballs and just sell the fillings of the dumpling. Service was great. Our water and tea were filled constantly without being asked. Strangely, my mouth was super dry after lunch there... either a lot of MSG or sodium, who knows? Well, it was over-hyped to me and unfortunately that was not enough for me to plan a return trip again.