IndoChine Vegan’s website makes the claim of “fine dining”, and while the restaurant is not a high-end, fine dining experience, this small funky, pan-Asian restaurant serve some really, really good food. The menu includes dishes from a range of Asian cuisines and has a Western section with vegan burgers and fish and chips. When I was there the lone server/hostess was quickly overwhelmed by the dinner rush of customers and to-go orders, so the service was a little slow. My other complaint is that the kitchen venting needs upgrading, the dining room gets a lot of cooking fumes. But go there for the food, it is awesome, the Sweet and Sour Soy Protein was the best sweet and sour pork I have ever eaten.
The Dumplings: IndoChine’s perfectly pan-fried pot stickers were very simple and well-balanced, just filled with cabbage, shiitake mushroom, and ginger. They had a mild cabbage flavor, with a fragrance from the ginger and a slightly earthy, umami undertone from the mushrooms. If we hadn’t ordered two other amazing dishes and filled up, we would have ordered a second round of these dumplings. The dumplings were so good, that the next day we considered going back and just ordering piles of these dumplings. Instead we went to Shizen which was a mistake (see next week), we should have gone back to IndoChine and binged on their dumplings.
The Location: IndoChine is on Valencia Street between 16th and 17th streets in The Mission District. This block is full of stores/boutiques, small funky bars and Asian and Central American restaurants and is a really good eating and drinking destination.
The search for the world's best dumplings 