Mr. Paik’s Noodles, Grenada Hills, CA

Posted on June 15, 2025 by rundlea

I have been a fan of Baek Jong-won (aka Mr. Paik) since becoming addicted to his show Delicious Rendezvous during the pandemic.  The Korean food documentaries that he co-hosts on Netflix are also excellent (the KFood Show A Nation of [Insert Korean Food] series and the [Insert Korean Food] Rhapsody series).  He has several global restaurant chains and a large packaged food company.  But he has been taking some heat lately for poor quality control across his empire and he has stepped back from hosting TV shows to focus on his food companies.

His Korean-Chinese fast casual chain, Mr. Paik’s Noodles, now has 300 locations, and I recently tried the Granada Hills, CA location.  The Jjamppong (noodles, vegetables, seafood and pork in a spicy broth) and the Tangsuyu (sweet and sour pork) were both excellent.  We also got the Mapo Tufo, which I am not a fan of overall, but my dining companions reported that the version at Mr. Paik’s was very good.  The two-part Netflix show Jjajangmyeon Rhapsody gives a hunger inducing overview of Korean-Chinese food, including covering Jjamppong and Tangsuyu.

The Dumplings: Mandu (dumplings) came to Korea from China, so it makes sense that they are part of the Mr. Paik’s Noodles menu.  Deep fried, pork and vegetable filled dumplings are the only style that serve. The dumplings were really tasty, but a little greasy, they needed to have been shaken a little more before serving to remove the grease.  I pounced on the dumplings as soon as they arrived at the table and the first dumpling I had was deliciously crispy.  But then I got distracted for a few minutes by the other dishes and by the time I returned to the dumplings the bottoms of the dumplings had gotten soggy with oil and lost their crunch.  My recommendation is to eat the dumplings first, while they are still crispy.     

The Location:  There are 14 Mr. Paik Noodles locations in California with a bunch of them in the LA area.  The local intel is that because the locations are franchises, the quality varies a lot between locations, with the Grenada Hills location being the best. This location is at 10650 Zelzah Ave, at the corner of Kingsbury Street.

Posted in Chinese, Gyoza, Jjampppong, Korean, Los Angeles, Mandoo, Noodles, Pan Fried, Potsticker | Leave a comment

DD Soup Dumplings & Hibachi

Posted on May 25, 2025 by rundlea

I generally avoid the Times Square area in NYC, but I needed to get A to the train after a session at Local 42, a great dive bar on 9th ave, and ended up walking along 42nd street. Thankfully I stumbled upon DD Soup Dumpling & Hibachi, which is a fusion restaurant that sells Shanghainese soup dumplings and shumai, American-Chinese food and Teppanyaki with the full show experience.  Teppanyaki is food cooked on a large flattop grill in front of group of diners, and the cooking is accompanied by a show put on by the chef, who might juggle utensils, flip food through the air, and create flaming food volcanoes.  Teppanyaki is thought to have originated in 1945 in Japan when the restaurant chain Misono developed the concept of cooking Western-influenced food on the teppan (flattop grill).  This concept proved popular with tourists to Japan but not so much among the Japanese.  Teppanyaki restaurants focusing on Japanese diners sell yakisoba and okonomiyaki and downplay the show.  Teppanyaki was popularized in the US by the Benihana chain.          

DD Soup Dumpling & Hibachi has a half dozen Teppanyaki stations, table seating for maybe 20 diners and a small cocktail bar. The Chinese menu has a Dim Sum with a good selection of dumpling options, and then sections covering all the usual American-Chinese dishes.The Teppanyaki menu offers a wide selection of grilled meat options. 

The Dumplings: The Dim Sum menu offers pork soup dumplings, crab meat and pork soup dumplings, pan fried veg and pork dumplings, steamed shrimp dumplings, steamed chicken dumplings, boiled seafood and pork dumplings, Shanghai style sticky rice Shumai, Shepherds purse wontons, steamed veg dumplings, pan fried pork buns and vegetable buns with mushrooms.

Both styles of soup dumpling were excellent, with a lot of flavorful soup and tasty meat filling.  They were also prepared really well, so they were blazing hot but not over cooked, and each of the dumplings maintained its integrity as they were lifted out of the steamer.  Too often soup dumplings are over cooked and the wrappers lose their integrity and the soup spills out, either in the steamer or when you pick them up. 

We also got the pan-fried pork buns, which were also really tasty and actually had soup inside. But the buns needed to be fried a little browner on the bottom to develop deeper flavors from the Maillard reaction. But I will give DD Soup Dumplings props for actually having soup in their pork buns.  In the US you rarely find restaurants serving pan-fried pork soup dumplings (Shen Jian Bao) with actual soup in them.  It always seems like the soup has been absorbed into the soft, bready bun wrapper during the cooking process.

The Location:  DD Soup Dumplings and Hibachi is on 42nd street between 8th and 9th avenues in NYC’s Times Square neighborhood.  I am hoping that DD stands for Dumplings on the Deuce. 

Posted in Bao, Buns, Chinese, Dim Sum, New York City, Pan Fried, Pork, Sheng Jian Bao, Soup Dumpling, Steamed, Xiao Long Bao | Leave a comment

White Yak Restaurant, Philadelphia, PA

Posted on May 6, 2025 by rundlea

The White Yak Restaurant serves up some excellent Tibetan food in the Roxborough neighborhood of Philadelphia.  They serve a wide range of the Himalayan classics, including the Himalayan dumplings known as Momos. The history of the momo dates back to the 14th century. It is unclear whether the dish spread from Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley to Tibet or vice versa. The flavorful and spicy Nepalese momo is quite different from the Tibetan momo which is made with a thicker dough and very little seasoning other than salt.

White Yak also has several vegan options and serve vegan soy beef and soy chicken.  We tried the Shoko Sisi – shredded potato stir-fried with carrot and garlic – and the dried tofu with fresh shiitake mushroom and vegetables, both of which were excellent.  The house chili sauce is also really good.  

The Dumplings:  White Yak makes their Momo fresh, to order, and they are excellent.   They serve classic Momos, prepared either steamed or deep fried, with options for beef, chicken, pork, mixed vegetables, cauliflower or potato filling.  They also serve Momo Khotrak, which are the crispy, pan-fried, pot-sticker style variant of Momos, with options for beef, chicken or veggie filling.  White Yak also serves Momo swimming in the house chili sauce; Chili Momo with green and red chili added to the various filling options and are served with chili sauce, this dish is labeled “Very Spicy”; and Momo Firecracker, which are fried Momo with green and red chili added to the filling options, served with their house special sauce, and are labelled “It is spicy”. 

I tried the deep-fried pork Momo and the steamed vegan combo, both of which come with the house signature Momo sauce, which is creamy and mildly spicy.  The deep-fried pork Momo were delicious and so juicy they were practically soup dumplings.  Be cautious eating these Momo, if you are not careful when biting into them, you risk getting juice squirted on you.  All three styles of Momo in the vegan combo were excellent, with the savory, clean tasting Mixed Vegetable ones being the best.  The Potato and Cauliflower Momo were both seasoned with curry spice and both had a flavor that was reminiscent of a Samosa.  These two Momo were really good, but I could eat the mixed vegetable Momo all day.

The Location: White Yak is in the north-west Philly neighborhood of Roxborough.  Its at 6118 Ridge Ave, near the corner of Green Lane.

Posted in Momo, Pan Fried, Philadelphia, Pork, Potsticker, Steamed, Vegan, Vegetarian, Veggie Dumplings | Leave a comment

Worijip BBQ Pork Buns, New York City

Posted on April 20, 2025 by rundlea

Worijip is an amazing Korean prepared food store on 32nd street in Korea Town. Before the pandemic they had a long self-serve food bar where you could load up a to-go container and pay by weight. Now they have removed the food bar and replaced it with tall shelves loaded with pre-packed to-go food containers. You can get entire to-go prepared meals with mains and sides or single dishes like pan-fried tofu or kim bap. They have several microwaves and seating so you can heat up your food and eat it there, but it is my go to place to get food to eat on Amtrak.

They recently started selling steamed mini barbecue pork buns, which come two per order. On both occasions when I purchased them, they were still warm so the buns were fluffy and moist. The barbecue pork inside is Chinese style and is very sweet with a hint of five spice seasoning. These are very good steamed buns and are perfect to eat on the train.

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Omni Plant-Based Pork Teriyaki Bao, a frozen dumpling review

Posted on April 13, 2025 by rundlea

I have made a bunch of dumplings using Omni’s Pork-Style ground plant-based meat, and it has become my go to for making vegan dumplings. But it is increasingly hard to find this product, and the pork strips and luncheon slices, in the supermarkets.  Instead, I am seeing more and more of Omni’s ready to eat processed foods, like their frozen Teriyaki Bao.  I guess their profit margins are higher on the value added, packaged foods compared to their raw ground and strips pork replacement products.  The frozen Omni Plant Based Teriyaki Bao come four to a bag and are each a little larger than a golf ball.  They turned out to be a very good frozen bao, the filling had a ground pork texture and a sweet and slightly smoky Teriyaki flavor.  The bun is quite sweet, more so than your usual bun, and after microwaving, the bun has the fluffy texture of a fresh steamed bao.  This is a vegan bao that presents as a really good frozen pork bun.

Posted in Bao, Buns, Frozen Dumpling Review, Pork, Vegan, Vegetarian | Leave a comment

Return to Pasta B Jinghua, Milan, Italy

Posted on April 6, 2025 by rundlea

I originally tried Milan’s Pasta B Jinghua during a work trip in 2023 and had to go back there again during a recent trip to Italy.  It seems like the word is out on how good this place is, it was packed for lunch in a way that I had not experienced back in 2023.  The pan-fried pork dumplings are still excellent.  The dumplings are like sausage rolls with the wrapper folded around the filling with both ends open.  The pan-fried dough wrappers are quite thick with a good chew and the filling is made of Chinese cabbage, Chinese chive, pork, shrimp and crab, although the pork flavor is most assertive. Just like last time, they were super juicy and flavorful and remain one of the best pork dumplings I have tried.  We also got the homemade noodles with vegetables, which was excellent.  The noodles were cooked to a perfect al dente texture so they were springy and slightly chewy and were dressed with a light sauce and lots of vegetables.  

  

Posted in Gyoza, Noodles, Pan Fried, Pork, Potsticker, Shrimp | Leave a comment

Su Guan, Florence, Italy

Posted on March 30, 2025 by rundlea

As a vegan Chinese restaurant, Su Guan makes it onto all of the “vegan in Florence” lists that you can find on the internet.  They make an absolute standout dish that I have never seen before, Salt and Pepper Corn.  They use the salt and pepper seasoning and very light batter coating used with salt and pepper shrimp but apply it to corn kernels.  The corn is cooked perfectly so it still pops when you chew it and the sweetness of the corn does the same thing with the salt and pepper seasoning that good, sweet shrimp do, but the corn takes it to eleven.   The dish is crunchy, sweet, salty and pepper spicy and we ordered it twice.  The sauteed veggies with noodles was also excellent and had a beautifully light sauce.  As a plus they serve beer in giant size, mighty bottles.  Their opening hours seem to be a little idiosyncratic, one night we went there when they were listed as being open and were told by the guy delivering veggies that they were not opening for another hour.

The Dumplings: Unfortunately, the dumplings we had at Su Guan were not good.  We got the trio of dumplings, which appears to be three styles of dumplings, with three dumplings per style.  The menu lists the filling as being , seitan, bamboo, lotus root, veggies, pickled mustard greens, mushroom, celery and dragon fruit juice.  It is unclear if each style of dumplings had a different subset of these ingredients, because they all tasted the same, bland.  I was looking forward to the pickled mustard greens expecting them to provide a pickled or fermented kick, but I got nothing.  The main thing that distinguished the dumplings was the different color wrappers.   The dumplings were also way over cooked and were served crowded on the plate so that the dumplings stuck to each other.  It was impossible to pick the dumplings up without the gummed together wrappers ripping.

The Location: Su Guan is a little north of the main tourist section of town, at 22 via della Scalia, near the Piazza and Basilica di Santa Maria Novella.  Be aware the Google maps app shows it having two locations on via della Scalia, the first at #22 and the second further down inside the Hotel Alba Palace.  Su Guan is just down the street from an excellent pub called Joshua Tree, which has a great selection of beer. an extensive selection of whisky and very knowledgeable bar tenders.  Plus, they play a solid 90’s grunge sound track and have soccer on some large screens.  This is a great place to check out before dinner at Su Guan.

Posted in Uncategorized, Vegan, Vegetarian, Veggie Dumplings | Leave a comment

Dim Sum Time, Florence, Italy

Posted on March 23, 2025 by rundlea

Dim Sum Time is a narrow, brightly lit restaurant in Florence’s historic district, a few minutes walk from the Uffizi museum and the Piazza Della Signora. Much of the vegan food in Florence was not to my friend’s taste and there is only so many times you can eat pasta with red sauce in this steak-centric city.  Dim Sum Time has vegan veggie dumplings and they can make their Mapo Tofu vegan too.  We got the veggie dumplings three times in our stay in Florence.  This the perfect destination for a quick lunch after spending the morning looking at art at the Uffizi.

The Dumplings:  I tried the pan-fried pork dumplings and pan-fried shrimp dumplings and the steamed veggie dumplings.  Both types of pan-fired dumplings had relatively thick wrappers and were seared crispy golden to brown on the bottom.  The pork dumplings were delicious, savory, salty, porky and very juicy. I ended up getting them twice during our trip.  Without a dunking in the dipping sauce, the shrimp dumplings were less flavorful and needed some seasoning, but the shrimp tasted really fresh.  You can watch the veggie dumpling being stuffed at a workstation and steamer set-up next to the cash register.  The filling looked to be solely comprised of par-cooked bok-choy greens.  These veggie dumplings were excellent, the filling was well seasoned and they tasted like healthiness, without tasting too intensely cruciferous. These little veggie bombs were a great antidote to the porchetta, ham and pasta I was otherwise gorging on.

Location:  Dim Sum Time is located at Via De’Neri, number 17, right near the intersection with via della Mosca, be aware that Google lists it as number 37, it is not.    They are open 12:00 to 3:30 and 6:00 to 9:30.    

Posted in Pan Fried, Pork, Potsticker, Shrimp, Steamed, Vegan, Vegetarian, Veggie Dumplings | Leave a comment

Pop’s Bun Shop Philadelphia PA

Posted on March 17, 2025 by rundlea

Pop’s Bun Shop opened in the winter of 2024 and quickly got write ups in the Philly Inquirer and became popular on Instagram.  The shop is a small corner bakery that sells its sweet sticky buns and Kolache, riffs on the Czech treat klobásník, from a to-go window.  There is almost always a line down the block waiting to be served, especially on Friday and Saturday.  My experience was that part of the reason for the line was that it seemed that everyone needed to have some sort of conversation with the server at the window, took some photos at the take-out window and then struggled to get their Apple/Google pay apps to work.  The menu is handwritten on a school lunch bag taped to the inside of the glass door and items get crossed off the list as they sell out.  The buns and kolache are baked in small batches and Pop’s stays open until they sell out.  They are open Thurs 9am – 1pm, Fri 9am – 1pm and Sat 9am – 1pm/sellout. They typically sell three kinds of sweet buns and three types of Kolache, one sweet and the other two are savory.  Ona random note I learned from Wikipedia’s interesting entry on Kolache, apparently they are big in Texas.

The Dumplings.  Kolache are a type of stuffed, baked bun, and so are within the remit of Dumpling Hunter.  Pretty consistently when I have walked past the store the two choices of savory Kolache are egg, cheese and tomato chutney, which I ordered, or sausage and gravy.    The Kolache looked very similar to a Chinses baked bun.  But my take on Pop’s Kolache is that it did not live up to the Instagram and media hype, in fact the bun was really bland. The cheese appeared to be either white cheddar or white American cheese, either way a very mild cheese, and the chutney was the least flavorful chutney I have tasted.  The filling also needed more salt and a dash of pepper.

The Location:  Pop’s Bun Shop is at the northern end of Philadelphia’s amazing Italian Markey, on ninth street at the corner of Catherine street.  It is just down the street from the stellar Sarcone’s Bakery, which sells fresh Italian bread and tomato pie, and about 2 blocks from the famous Isgro’s Italian pastry bakery.  If you are near the Italian Market and crave bread/pastry products Isgro’s and Sarcone’s are your top choices.     

Posted in Bao, Buns, Kolache, Philadelphia | Leave a comment

Return to Din Tai Fung, downtown Seattle, WA

Posted on February 24, 2025 by rundlea

On this trip to Seattle, I returned to down town Din Tai Fung location which I reviewed previously here. As I have written before, I think Din Tai Fung’s soup dumplings are over rated, they are good and consistent restaurant to restaurant and outing to outing, but I do not think they deserve the cult following that have achieved.  The wrappers are consistently thin and supple and almost never rupture or leak and the dumplings have a generous helping of soup.  My critiques have been that the dumplings are on the small side, the pork filling is bland and they don’t cook them to a high enough temperature.

But after this latest meal I need to revise viewpoint somewhat.  Ok, the pork soup dumplings are still under seasoned and the Shanghai style shumai are bland to the point of flavorless.  But the truffle and pork soup dumplings are a sensation.  The soup has a really strong truffle flavor that infused into the pork, which was actually well seasoned.  The down side is that instead of the usual 10 soup dumplings, you only get five dumplings in an order of truffle and pork soup dumplings, for about the same price as the plain pork ones.

They also now have desert Xia Long Bao which use a very think sheet of mochi as the dumpling wrapper.  We got the Chocolate & Mochi Xiao Long Baowhich had a ball of warm soft, almost molten, chocolate truffle inside. These things are genius. 

Din Tai Fung has also stepped up its vegan game since I last was at one about a year before the pandemic.  I recall the location in Seoul I tried about 10 years ago had no vegan dishes, the US locations I subsequently tried had a few dishes, but now they really seem to have expanded the vegan options.

Posted in Seattle, Shumai, Soup Dumpling, Vegan, Vegetarian | Leave a comment