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| - After trying Qing Hua on the recommendation of a friend who took me here, I can say that it is one of my now two favored dumpling places in Montréal (the other being Mai Xiang Yuan). The thing about dumpling places is that every Chinese kid growing up will always think that their parents' handmade dumplings are the best and hence cannot be beaten. In addition, when you take parents out to various dumpling restaurants, they will most likely comment about how their dumplings taste WAY better, but I have to give them my thanks for stating the obvious, I guess?
Anyway, we ordered a steamed basket of shrimp, pork, and leek dumplings (my go-to for testing the quality of the dumplings) and a plate of pan-fried curry beef dumplings. I should mention here that Qing Hua advertises their dumplings as "soup dumplings," which seems to be rather misleading as it automatically makes me think of Shanghainese ???, which look more like small steamed buns and have LOTS of soup in them. Their northern-style dumplings, however, seemed to be relatively enhanced by the soup they had in them, which is normally not how they're made, but I'll take it. They were very good steamed dumplings overall! As for the curry beef dumplings, my friend and I both ended up agreeing that frying the dumplings made the filling taste a little off, and it wasn't nearly as juicy as the steamed ones and they most likely would have tasted better had they also been steamed. After finishing the plate, we ended up just ordering another round of the shrimp, pork, and leek dumplings, because why the hell not?
Overall, I still think I like Mai Xiang Yuan better than Qing Hua, but it's still definitely worth checking out especially if you want a northern-southern Chinese fusion-esque (NOT Americanized Chinese, by the way) dumpling, with the physical style of the northern one and the soupiness of the southern one. Eat up, because you're going to miss them when they're gone!
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