My family used to make a monthly pilgrimage to Los Angeles’ Chinatown for groceries and a decent meal. My father immigrated from mainland China right before the Communist Revolution and good Chinese food was hard to come by in the sleepy beach town that I grew up in.
I’m basing my sense of “authenticity” on those Chinese meals with my family and all those wedding banquets we attended as well. My father also hung out with a group of Chinese STEM immigrants and the potluck dinners they hosted were legendary for the array of home cooked Chinese delicacies!
So how else do I rate “authenticity”? By the number of Asian diners of course! On a number of drive bys (The Dumpling House is on Walnut Street which we drive by several times a week en route to flute and Valeo FC), I ask my kids to count up the number of Asians they spot as we wiz by. They don’t really like this task but they humor me. It seems to attract about a 50% Asian customer base which is high given that Newton is just 11% Asian!
That seemed to be worth checking out. I went with my husband for lunch and we ordered the weird stuff like this dish of tendon and beef in a spicy sauce:
The meat is stewed in soy sauce and aromatics and then doused in a spicy sauce. It was both familiar and new to me. The meat had that familiar flavor of loo’ed slow simmered flavor, but the sauce was new to me. The tendon was chewy and flavorful. It was delicious and clearly authentic but I’m not quite sure what region of China this hails from. Northern China or Central with the zippy spicy sauce?
My husband ordered the Ma Po Tofu, feeling the need for something healthy. This was light and delicious!
I also ordered a tofu dish: pressed tofu with bamboo shoots. It was my favorite dish out of a meal of outstanding dishes.
Interestingly, the dumplings were not my favorite. I’m used to thin skins and these thick skin dumplings were good but not what I’ll be coming back for. The menu is full of more interesting dishes that seems to attract the Chinese crowd from beyond Newton.
The Dumpling House is a find! It’s a completely new restaurant from the previous Hot Pot restaurant. Come by and try it before word gets out and it gets really crowded!
