Hong’s Dumplings – Frozen Dumpling Review

Posted on July 13, 2025 by rundlea

In the overwhelming, colorfully kaleidoscopic frozen dumpling aisle at H-Mart, Hong’s Dumplings caught my eye for its austere black and white packaging. It reminded me of the generic black and white labelled “Food” and “Beer” eaten in the classic film Repo Man. Hong’s Dumplings are made by Hong Jin-kyung Co., Ltd, founded by the South Korean model, variety show host, comedian and actress, Hong Jin-kyung.  Her food business began in 2004 focused on kimchi and achieved the No. 1 spot in online kimchi sales.  The company soon expanded into dumplings, japchae, galbi, gomtang, doenjang, gochujang, and various sauces.

I picked up a bag of mushroom dumpling and a bag of kimchi dumplings, which were both excellent and are both are vegan.  The kimchi dumplings are filled with kimchi, glass noodles, tofu, dried radish, green onion, onion, and leek. The dumplings have strong kimchi punch and are quite spicy, but a little oily. The front of the packaging for the mushroom dumplings features shiitake and black fungus, so I was surprised that these dumplings did not have a strong mushroom flavor and tasted more like a traditional veg dumpling.  When I looked more closely, I saw the package says, with a surprising precision, shiitake 4.18% and black fungus 3.69%.  The filling also includes carrot, green onion, tofu, dried radish, onion, cabbage and leeks.  So with these dumplings you won’t get much mushroom flavor but they are a very tasty veg dumpling.  Both of these dumplings are going to become a staple in my freezer.

Posted in Frozen Dumpling Review, Kimchi, Korean, Pan Fried, Potsticker, Vegan, Vegetarian, Veggie Dumplings | Leave a comment

Chengdu Center City, Philadelphia, PA

Posted on July 6, 2025 by rundlea

Su Xing House, Philadelphia’s long running vegetarian Chinese restaurant has closed and been replaced by Chengdu Center City, an outpost of University City’s Chengdu Famous Food.  Chengdu serves Sichuan style Chinese food but thankfully has kept a lot of Su Xing’s vegetarian dishes; the General Tso’s Seitan is excellent.  Su Xing House will be missed a great deal, but I have been enjoying Chengdu a lot and Philly still has Unit Su Vege serving excellent vegetarian Chinese food.

The Dumplings:  Chengdu has a good selection of dumplings and buns, several of which, including the steamed and pan-fried dumplings, are vegan.  The steamed dumplings, which are filled with cabbage, carrot, chive, radish, green onion, ginger, garlic, and soy, were good, but not as good as remember Su Xing’s being.  The Pork Wonton’s with Chili oil were very good, and I am definitely going to get these again. Part of what I liked about their wontons is that they had lots of excess noodle for the sauce to cling to.  The chili sauce had lip and tongue tingling Sichuan pepper corns as an ingredient, which is unusual in this dish.

The star of the meal though was the, construct it yourself, Five Spice Pork buns.  This dish arrives as a platter of sliced braised pork belly, a bowl of Hoisin sauce, slivered scallions and cucumber, and three white fluffy steamed Lotus leaf style buns. These buns are sort of clam shell shaped and have a horizontal fold that can be opened up so the buns can be stuffed with your choice of filling.  This dish lets you build a bun with your personal mix of savory and sweet flavors and mix of pork meat and pork fat.  My only complaint with this dish is that it only comes with three buns, while there is enough pork belly and greens to fill five or six buns.

The location: Chendgu Center City is on Sansom Street near the corner of 15th street.  This block, between 15th and 16th street, is a row of excellent bars and restaurants.  As an appetizer before going to Chengdu, I got a couple of happy-hour oysters at the Sansom Street Oyster House, which I highly recommend.            

Posted in Bao, Buns, Gyoza, Pan Fried, Philadelphia, Pork, Potsticker, Sichuan Dumplings, Wontons | Leave a comment

Din Tai Fung, Santa Monica, CA

Posted on June 28, 2025 by rundlea

Continuing my tour of U.S. Din Tai Fung locations, on a recent trip to LA I checked out the Santa Monica location.  I have long argued that Din Tai Fung’s Xiao Long Bao are over-rated and Santa Monica reinforced my point of view.  On the plus side the dumplings are consistent across locations and visits and they are rarely over cooked, but I have had more flavorful soup dumplings at plenty of other dumpling spots.  For this outing we got two steamers of pork soup dumplings and a steamer of pork and truffle soup dumplings, which were amazing at the downtown Seattle location.  All three steamers of dumplings suffered from the same issue, the top of the dumplings, where the folds were pinched together, were dry and crunchy.  Our hypothesis was that the dumplings had not been made to order and had been sitting out for a while. As a result, the tops dried out and the steam cooking was not able to refresh this denser part of the dough wrapper. 

The Vegan Spicy Wontons (filled with bean curd, baby bok choy, shiitake mushrooms, wood ear mushrooms, glass noodles, and jicama) and the Shrimp & Kurobuta Pork Pot Stickers were both really good and far more enjoyable than the soup dumplings.  The pot stickers were prepared with a golden crispy skirt of fried batter, which I always enjoy. The steamed vegan dumplings had the same filling as the vegan spicy wontons, and were good, but I preferred the wontons. Din Tai Fung has also upped it vegan game in recent years, the Spinach with garlic and String beans with garlic were both great.

Posted in Chinese, Gyoza, Pan Fried, Pork, Potsticker, Shanghai, Steamed, Vegan, Vegetarian, Veggie Dumplings, Xiao Long Bao | Leave a comment

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