Looking for the best restaurant for a variety of dumplings in Irvine. Would love to find places that have northern Chinese food or other regional Chinese, but open to all options
Have read about several places but curious what comes to mind for folks. Willing to go slightly outside Irvine if necessary.
Thanks!
Can’t go wrong with 101 Noodle Express.
I would not go there.
Thanks for the heads up on this new opening. I haven’t been to Irvine in, well, a few weeks, so I need to try this out.
Just expect your typical Mainland import. Both good and bad.
We ended up eating at JA Jiaozi which I saw on Yelp even before ipsedixit suggested it. And like ipsedixit says, there was some good and some bad.
Service was friendly and attentive, and the space is very nice with fairly spread out tables and high ceilings.
The food itself was pretty good overall – nothing was bad, though nothing really stood out so much that I’d want to go back again. The dumplings were good but expensive. I liked the signature dumplings with the shrimp roe flavor, but the presentation was sort of lackluster (which is often the case for boiled dumplings I guess). Smoked duck was very tasty, served with strawberry jam. I also liked the steamed beef and onion dumplings. Cucumber salad was good, and the way they spiral-cut the cucumbers was cool. Steamed colored dumplings were $2 per dumpling and not that exciting flavor-wise. I can’t even remember the fillings.
We tried two of the iced tea drinks – one was a tropical fruit mixed tea, which I thought was actually really good and not too sweet. I had an iced lemon tea which was typical. Big glasses, $5 each, no boba or other toppings available.
I anticipate being back in Irvine lots in the future (our good friends just moved there), so will definitely try other places when I return.
Thanks!
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Thanks for the tip. Good definitely outweighs the bad. Dumplings were small and the food is overpriced, but I’d go back anyway as it is a very intriguing restaurant. Chandavkl's Blog: Mainland Chinese Dumplings Have Come To America And They Sort Of Look Hipsterish
The steamed dumplings are better than the boiled ones. Almost seems like they don’t know how to boil dumplings. (3 boils, 3 cups of water, done)
