We were lucky enough to stumble upon this place while trying to find a lunch place in Chinatown. Good thing my mom had a craving for dumplings. This restaurant serves dumplings and also hand-pulled noodles, but today they were all out of the noodles, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. We ordered three plates of steamed dumplings, but when my mom saw another table eating pan-fried potstickers, we added a fourth order. At first, I thought the dumplings weren't worth $9 since we got very similar dumplings in NYC for 20 cents each. But, each plate had 12-15 dumplings and they had a lot more choices in what they were stuffed with. My favorite was the beef curry steamed dumpling. The pan-fried cilantro beef potstickers were also amazing. We also tried the shrimp and beef steamed dumplings and the regular pork dumplings. I am a big fan of chili oil and they seem to have a house-made one ready at your table. Add some red vinegar to that and it is the perfect dipping sauce for your dumplings.
The cool thing about this place is that the dumplings are made fresh and ready to order. They don't start stuffing or wrapping them until they are ordered. You can see through the kitchen window how they stuff and fold them too! The service is great and the guy who took our orders could speak five different languages, which is pretty accommodating to all the different tourists they get. Back in San Diego, I loved this tiny little restaurant called the Dumpling Inn. This place is definitely better and should be aptly crowned the Dumpling Hotel Resort and Spa.