Asian Taste opened a little under a month ago and doesn’t seem to want anyone to know its exists, no web page, Facebook, Instagram or internet presence at all.  The only mention of the restaurant that I can find online is in the minutes of the town license commission meeting when it applied for its alcohol license. The menu is mainly Thai with a few Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese dishes added to the menu.  Their vegetarian Pad Thai and Cashew Tofu were both excellent and can be made vegan.

Deep fried vegetable dumplings

The Dumplings:  Asian Taste has seven varieties of house made dumplings: Asian Steamed Dumplings, filled with shrimp, chicken, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, and black mushrooms; Asian Fried Dumplings, filled with shrimp, chicken, glass noodles, sweet corn and ginger; Steamed or Deep Fried Vegetable Dumplings, filled with cabbage, seasoned tofu and carrots; Crab Rangoon, filled with cream cheese, crab meat and minced vegetables; and Fried or Steamed Shumai filled with either shrimp or edamame.

I tried the Fried Vegetable Dumplings, which were deep fried so the wrapper was like a crispy wonton.  The filling was more on the savory fake meat, rather than leafy green, end of the vegetable dumpling filling continuum, and tasted quite good.  It was pretty obvious that the dumplings were home made, they varied a lot in how much they were stuffed with filling and the number and style of pleats.  These dumplings are vegan.

The Dipping Sauce: The dumplings are served on a plate with a built in dipping sauce pool, but it was really too small to dip the dumplings in.  The sauce itself was a fairly basic soy and vinegar mix.

The Location:  Asian Taste is so under the radar it doesn’t even show up on Google Maps and Street View shows the predecessor restaurant.  It is at 84 Pleasant Street in Northampton, which is not even on the main downtown drag, so I doubt passerby foot traffic will make up for the lack of internet visibility.