A couple of weeks ago I took part in Philadelphia’s boisterous No Kings march. My favorite chant was the, oh so Philly, call and response “F*ck Trump, Go Birds”. The march route was along the edge of Chinatown, and after completing the march we bailed on listening to the speakers and hit some dumpling restaurants in Chinatown.

Our first stop was Lucious Dumplings, which is a branch of the Michelin “Bib Gourmand” awarded Los Angeles Lucious Dumpling. Bib Gourmand is an award given by the Michelin Guide to restaurants that offer “fine cuisine at moderate prices”. The various news articles I have seen announcing the opening of the Philly Lucious Dumplings remarked on the presence of Taiwanese dumpling making robot in the kitchen that can churn out 6,000 dumplings in an hour. Even if their dumplings are robot made they were delicious. Lucious Dumpling’s space has a sleek, clean, modern design.

The Dumplings: We got the pork soup dumplings and the steamed fish dumplings with napa cabbage. The soup dumplings had a really tasty pork flavor with notes of ginger, with lots of soup inside and no leakage. But I think the main reason they had not leaked was that the dough wrapper was very robust, these were not a delicate, ethereal soup dumpling. This was a soup dumpling that got the job done but was not fine dining soup dumpling. The steamed fish and napa cabbage dumplings were also great and arguably superior to the soup dumplings. The fish was a flaky white fish with a delicate flavor that was complemented by the slight cruciferous flavor of the napa. The wrappers had a slight chewy texture but were thinner than the ones used for the soup dumplings.  

The Location: Luscious Dumpling is in Philadelphia’s Chinatown on Race street at near the corner of 10th street.