Chinese Dumpling House, or 真東北餃子館 as they’re known in Chinese (the signage has no English), has been at its Metro Square location for decades. Though they are not as big and shiny-looking as some of the newer/renovated Northern-style dim sum places, they are serious about tradition.
We arrived at peak lunch hour and waited about 15 minutes for a table. The place was small and cramped, but service was fairly fast considering they make everything to order. The dim sum was really cheap, and we went a bit nuts – ordered way too much! But that just means leftovers for the next meal.
The green onion pancake came in a dough twist form, which is something I’ve never seen before. It was light and crisp, with very aromatic scallions. The dough was not salty enough, however, and since it was a dough twist instead of a proper pancake, the inner layers were thick and chewy, instead of crispy.
The pork intestines tasted a bit off, as if they’d been sitting out for too long. The spicy marinate was decent though, so I ended up picking out and eating all the shredded vegetables.
I can’t remember the Chinese name for this, but it is a cold dish featuring liang fen, which is mung bean jelly (also known as nokdumuk in Korean). Liang fen doesn’t really taste like anything, which is why it is a great ingredient in cold dishes, because it pretty much goes with everything. This particular platter also consisted of cucumber, carrots, cooked pork strands, mu er, sliced egg wrappers, coriander, and sesame paste. Everything tasted great except, surprisingly, the sesame paste, which bogged everything down instead of making it lighter, the way mung bean jelly cold dishes usually feel.
This vegetarian dish was spectacular. It consisted of eggplants, potatoes, onions, and peppers, and it was so delicious and savoury. The vegetables were baked before they were stir-fried in some sort of gravy. They were gleaming with oil when they came out but that didn’t stop me from devouring half the plate. The potato chunks were like home fries, Chinese-style. I imagine that traditionally, small peppers would be used instead of bell peppers, but then the dish might have been too hot to handle.
The pan-fried pork dumplings were disappointing compared to the other dishes. One dumpling was clearly scorched, but most importantly, the filling was not savoury because a lot of the dumplings had leaked.
Then two large steamers arrived at our table. One was the vegetarian dumplings, stuffed with egg and chive (a combination usually reserved for fried dumplings, not steamed ones), the other were pork dumplings, stuffed with pork and pickled cabbage. Pickled cabbage is a popular ingredient in Northern China, and this restaurant made its own, so this was a real treat.
The egg and chive dumplings were not salty enough – a recurring theme with their dishes, it seemed. The pork and pickled cabbage dumplings were better, although I still appreciated the hand-made dumpling wrappers more than the filling.
We had red bean pancake for dessert (I use the term “dessert” loosely because Chinese meals do not formally distinguish between courses), which were so delicious. The pancake was just crispy enough, and the red bean paste melted against the heat of the dough into a smooth, luscious paste.
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3636 Steeles Ave., Unit 112-113,
Markham, ON
Tel: 905-947-9880
Northern Dumpling Kitchen is a small, casual restaurant tucked in-between many of the same in Times Square, Richmond Hill. I’m always on the look-out for northern-style dim sum, so when I read this Chowhound discussion, I immediately went to investigate it for myself.
Parking was hard to find in Times Square, since many Chinese like to go out to eat on the weekends. We arrived around 12:30 and only had to wait 10 minutes to be seated. The other patrons were all families who cared not for their appearances. The place was small and dingy, like the restaurants we used to frequent when the standard for cleanliness in Chinese restaurants was set lower. I was not impressed, but I knew that if the chef could pull off a really good steamed bun, I would be coming back. After all, who am I to judge the patrons and decor of a place that serves good, cheap food?
Service was fast and friendly. Unlike many dim sum locations where waitresses will ignore you for a good 20 minutes, this place was small and the servers kept an eye on everyone. The menu was long and varied, but we stuck to the dim sum selection. Prices were low, which was reasonable given the drab decor.
The first to arrive was a large bowl of fried tofu in fen si soup. The soup was filled with crisp and light fried tofu, clearly made in-house, but could have used more vermicelli.
Next came the tu dou si, potato strands in chili oil, which was lacking in salt and altogether undercooked (they felt wet somehow).
We ordered a rice cake stir-fry with xue cai, soybeans, and lean pork. Rice cakes can be stir-fried with many ingredients, but this is one of my favourite combinations. The rice cakes were surprisingly tender and well-formed, even they were probably made from frozen rice cakes. The pickled xue cai was clearly the store-bought canned kind, because they were far more salty than the rest of the ingredients.
Next to arrive were the steamed dumplings (jiao zi). The fillings were not very savoury and completely forgettable.
Similarly, the xiao long bao tasted like wontons instead of proper soup-filled dumplings. I think it was because the filling was made with too many scallions and even some sesame oil (completely inappropriate). Traditional xiao long bao have a savoury pork filling.
The only slightly redeeming dish was a plate of spring onion pancakes with sliced smoked pork and Hoi Sin sauce. The spring onion pancakes did not have enough green onions, although they were cooked to a perfect crisp. The sliced smoked pork was delightfully smokey and paired well with Hoi Sin sauce.
While Northern Dumpling Kitchen seems to have gotten the right idea with its no frills service and northern-style menu, the chefs need to stop cutting corners and put more effort into the dishes. Xiao long bao that comes out tasting like wontons, stir fried rice cake with store-bought canned xue cai, and undercooked tu dou si is simply not acceptable to serve to a Chinese clientele. Perhaps some customers can overlook the laziness of the chefs at these prices, but I would rather drive another 20 minutes and pay the extra $5 per person at Ding Tai Fung.
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Ding Tai Fung has become surprisingly famous considering its unassuming location at First Markham Place, and for good reason. The dim sum here is the most authentic I’ve ever had, and lucky for me, it is Shanghai-style as opposed to Cantonese-style. That means, no carts rolling around and plenty of xiao long bao for all!
Pai gu may have been my favourite dish at home as a child, but xiao long bao were hands down my favourite thing to order when we were eating out. I grew up in Nanjing, which is not far from Shanghai and certainly influenced by Shanghai cuisine. We always went out to eat steamed buns (filled and unfilled) and steamed dumplings because they were cheap and extremely time-consuming to make at home (there were no such things as frozen buns and dumplings in those days so we’d have to make it from scratch). Not to mention, I spent a summer in Shanghai with my grandparents and I made sure to eat enough xiao long bao to last me until the next time I returned to China.
There is an art to eating xiao long bao, one that I don’t care to exercise unless I’m in China. What is this art and why don’t I exercise it? The proper way to eat xiao long bao is to gently lift it out of the long zi (bamboo basket), dip it in vinegar (optional – but if you are a native of the JiangSu province, you will not skip the vinegar), and eat it in one bite so that no soup leaks out. The xiao long bao wrapper is very thin and delicate, and it sticks to surfaces, so it’s easy to break if you set it down. And letting the soup leak out is a blasphemy for all Chinese, so be sure the xiao long bao goes straight from the basket to your mouth if you are eating with “real Chinese.”
The reason I tend not to follow this technique when I eat is because the soup is so hot that I’ll often burn my mouth if I eat the xiao long bao in one bite. However, I am not going to let the soup leak out either, so I’ll put the xiao long bao down in a small bowl or on a soup soon, and then I bite a small hole in the wrapper and suck out the soup before I eat the xiao long bao. Still tastes delicious!
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