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2009-05-26
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One of these days I must try this joint, I once told myself when the first joint opened, and now, with many branches opening up at the time of writing, I finally plucked up my courage to walk in despite how discouraging it looked, including one near my house. This day at the West End I finally walked in, The joint was brightly lit with a lot of orange in the decor. It's very fast-food, and it smelled like a mixture of bleach (for the floors), hot grease (for the dumplings), and an unidentified v
The 'Signature' dumplings did not give away the filling. It's cabbage and pork. The dumplings were crispy on the outside, but in terms of the crafty pleads potstickers generally have...these failed miserably, in a way that should honestly be considered "wrapper wrapping filling" because you can see the filling from each side of the dumplings, as if both ends of the wrapper adhered to each other and that was it. The wrapper itself felt doughy, and tasted like dough too, with a slight chewiness not expected from fine potstickers alike. The meat and cabbage filling was fair (on the first dumplings) but the novelty of "lightness" was soon gotten over with on the 5th dumpling. The filling was fluffy on the meat part but the cabbage soaked up into a mush. It's nowhere near the right proportion of meat vs vegetables. The "Chive and meat" dumplings were better The meat was as tasteless but the chives earned some perks with a pleasant garlicky taste, not to mention a pleasant colour of jade in the otherwise dreading dumplings.
"Hot and Sour Soup" was very hot, steaming as if it was a result of some prolonged period of vociferous boiling. The 'heat' resulted from the addition of white pepper -- a potent punch I'd say, and the vinegar tartness was very hard to detect from the thick soup. Unlike the usual hot and sour soup, this one did not have juliennes of tofu, but replaced by lanky strands of enoki mushrooms and carrots which made a supposedly very nutritional soup but disappointed as these vegetables turned limp in the broth. The 'Soy Milk' was good enough, served very cold and thick with a delicate sweetness to it. It went down easy to soothe the tickly feeling the freshly fried dumplings gave.
Having been here, the dumplings were made differently, and I would recommend the chive ones more than the signature. One good thing is that the dumplings are rarely fried in advance and left cool to room temperature. The fact that every order was served at optimal temperature (soy milk cold, everything else steaming) was one good reason to become a great dumpling parlour, which I assume this place intends to become in time, especially when more similar places are opening up fast. May return for the boiled dumplings at one point...
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