Dumpling House

Typical Chinese food to be honest. The prices are average. I’d recommend it since it is one of the only places in the area that I’m aware of and the food is good… but just good.

Every time I come to Boston. This is usually have to be my first stop. I have to get my soup dumplings fix. I tried soup dumplings everywhere and like Dinh Tai Fung and Joe Shanghai. Not as good as this place. Highly recommend you guys to try xao long bao here.

I had been here before and enjoyed the food, and to the sister restaurant in Boston, but my most recent take-​out experience was altogether gross. We orders hot and soup soup, vegetarian dumplings, pan fried noodles, fish in black bean sauce, and tofu with mustard greens and edamame.
The meal could be summed up two words: flavorless slop.
The soup was cold by the time we got home. The dumplings were the best part. The fish was slimy in texture and has a distinct fishy taste. I could not have more than two bites. The edamame dish was: edamame, teensy tiny shreds of mustard green, and shaved tofu covered with a congealing beige sauce. This di

Was impressed to be seated very fast on a busy Friday night. A more «authentic» place than your usual neighborhood Chinese take out places.
We got fried pork intestine (that’s right!) which was delicious. Lobster with scallion was alright but have had better in the Boston area. Despite mentioning dumplings in the name of the restaurants, they were not all that good. Too much dough, not enough contents. The sesame chicken was also mediocre.
Somewhat high price tag which is expected when dinning in Harvard/​Cambridge area.
Might eat there again, but not going to go out of our way for it.

Have been here quite a few times. Food is great, and I have been to enough Chinese restaurants to not have high expectations on the service. But what they did this evening was flat out rude.
Three of us were waiting for our table. Friday dinner time, busy, understood. I mean, the wait wasn’t even long. This woman called our number (37), while a group of five (white, professionals while we were three Asian students. Yes I can get this pretty ugly if I want to) showed up at the same time but they were number 27. She asked how many people were in their party and gave away our table, right in front of us, no apologies whatsoever. Didn’t even hesitate. I had to show her our number to remind her that we were still there waiting for a table. Three staff at the front desk, and no body uttered a word.
Of course with so many great alternatives in this area we chose to go somewhere else. Btw, we had hot pot at Flame, just a few steps down Mass Ave., and it was awesome.

Don’t get me wrong, the food here is great (sometimes a bit too greasy), but it just makes me miss home and authentic Chinese food even more.
This place is always packed during dinner time. At times the service seems a little rushed, but I suppose when the line is out the door, they are trying to get tables open ASAP.
My favorite part of this place is that they serve some of my favorite northern Chinese dishes. I’ll definitely be back to try them.
I’d recommend this place over the other Chinese restaurants in Harvard or Central. So grab your friends and share some food family style. My favorite dishes include: soup dumplings, spicy Szechuan fish, sautéed watercress.

If you want some amazing soup dumplings in Cambridge, you don’t even have to cross the river
They also have quite a variety of interesting and flavorful dishes. Soup dumplings aside, particular favorites include Beef with Long Horn Peppers (by themselves or in a noodle soup; Dried Bean Curd with Long Horn Peppers is also good) and the Special Lamb with Cumin (a very strongly flavored dish with sesame, Sichuan peppercorns, dry red peppers, and a huge amount of whole cumin).
It’s lively, the food is interesting and delicious, and soup dumplings!

A bit of Chinatown removed and transplanted into Cambridge; with added hospitality — good service and prompt seating.
Ordered the
1) Shanghai-​variation of XLB (pork and crab); liked the thinner skin, filling was decent as well.
2) Sichuan cod — spicier than appears; although the broth doesn’t take on a virulent hell-​bent demeanor, don’t let it fool you. Quite nice on a cold day, actually.
3) Basil eggplant — haven’t had this dish in a long minute, so my positive impression may have been influenced by nostalgia; if anything negative — it was just a tad sweet for my taste
Worth it.

Although Dumpling House has a fairly authentic menu, the quality is just OK. I’d go back only not to cross the river.

Yes. This is a place for soup dumplings. Some people write XLB (xiao long bao) without expanding the acronym or explaining it because there is a cult around it and people are really into their xlb. Are they the best in the world? Not certain because this has been the only place where I’ve had soup dumplings that the have actually lived up to their name. I, for one, enjoy them. It took me several tries to figure out the best way to eat them until the bf and I finally watched a video.
The food here in general is good. Business is good so the food is always hot and fresh. That being said-​you might end up waiting for a table on a Tuesday or Wednesday night. But, service is fast and people move in and out.
Out of the Chinese places in the area, this one is my favorite. The space is nice, service is fast, and the food is dependably good. I’m a sucker for dumplings and while I agree that these tend to have thicker skins than dumplings elsewhere, I’m willing to say it’s their style and I quite like them. Steamed garlic veggies are very tasty too!

My rating pretty much stays the same for this place upon a few more subsequent visits but I wanted to just confirm that the pork and chive dumplings are better boiled. As for the soup dumplings, the skin is a lot thicker than why I’m used to in Taiwan and at Ding Tai Fung but still tasty once you know that you’re not really eating a refined soup dumpling.
The spicy fish filet with tofu is also a descent dish. The fish is tender and the sauce is just the right amount of spicy to enjoy with rice.

5 stars for the XLB, a tad bit sweet, and they’re bigger than usual. So good.
3 stars for the cucumber salad, was not fresh, had a weird taste.
4 stars for the eggplant rice cake dishes — they were as expected and pretty good.
I’m going to start visiting this place often for the XLB’s going forward.

I had my doubts about coming to a Chinese restaurant not in Chinatown, but Dumpling House made a lasting impression of yummy tasty flavors with every dish I tried. The restaurant is pretty big with lots of tables, but this place sure fills up so come early or be prepared to wait!
My group of 5 came at 6:30 and we got a table right away on a Wednesday. After we sat down, the place got packed shortly after.
Crab meat XLB: juicy, plump dumplings filled with soup. REALLY good! I liked this one better than Taiwan café.
Pepper beef with onions & peppers: This one was my favorite dish of the dinner. Saucy flavors with a good portion of beef and veggies.
3 cup chicken: This is usually one of my favorite dishes at a Chinese place, but the pieces of chicken were so small with lots of bone. It was more like a 1 – 1 ratio of bone to meat. The flavor was still really good, but you have to eat it slowly so you don’t accidentally eat the bone!
Spicy pork– thick cuts of bacon, cabbage and green peppers. Great flavor
Everything overall was really good! I totally recommend this place if you are in the area or don’t want to travel all the way to Chinatown to get chinese food.

Wanted to grab some dumplings and a nice sit down Chinese place. Saw this name mentioned a couple times online so I thought we would check it out.
Wow. I think this might have easily been the best Chinese food I’ve ever had. The food came out super quick (almost too quick), and the service was fine. We ordered the sesame chicken, fried noodles with chicken, and pan fried pork/​cabbage buns.
The sesame chicken wasn’t «Americanized», meaning it wasn’t super sweet or rich. It was just right. Gooey, perfect amount of sesame seeds, and a nice bowl of rice.
The fried noodles I semi-​ordered by mistake. But, I ended up enjoying! It was something I’ve never had. But it was really good.
Finally, the pan fried buns were unreal. Moist, doughy, full of just straight goodness.
Overalls, amazing food, clean place, and a great little area. I will be returning, and so will my buddy!

Surprisingly good Chinese food on this side of the Charles! Packed around dinner time even on a Wednesday but didn’t have to wait long for a table for 5. The girls and I split several dishes and all were really good, but very oily and salty.
Crab meat XLB — Pretty good! Slightly thicker skins than I’m used to but had lots of soupy goodness and held it’s form well without tearing.
Pepper beef w/​onions & peppers — Yummy! saucy and flavorful but definitely need to eat it with rice. Beef was chewy b/​c Chinese people like to use cheaper cuts usually.
3 cups chicken — Saltyyyyy! Small pieces of chicken w/​lots of bone. The sauce was too salty for my taste even with white rice.
Spicy pork — My favorite of the night. Picked it because the picture looked so good and it did not disappoint. Spicy and big, but thin strips of pork that was pretty much like bacon. Really enjoyed this dish.
Chinese water spinach — Greasy but fresh. Typical water spinach, love it. It only really tastes good when it’s flash cooked in oil anyway.
Overally, good food and good service. Quick, attentive and get you in, get your food, get you out. Definitely beats the trek to Chinatown for food, but parking on Mass Ave is a pain still. It’s fairly close to the Central T stop tho and then you can get Paris Baguette for dessert on the way back!

I was craving hot and sour soup and Peking ravioli. (I was a restaurant kid growing up. My parents owned a small Chinese take-​out business, and I grew up eating a lot of the Americanized stuff.) I was nearby and after seeing the Unilocal photos decided to come here.
I ordered the hot and sour soup, Shan Dong dumplings, and rice cakes with pork and mustard greens. The soup had a fusion twist to it with eggs, carrots, and enoki mushrooms. I was in search of a more traditional hot and sour soup, so this one was disappointing. It was definitely not enough sour too. So, I didn’t really care for the soup. When the waiter put down the plate of rice cakes, it immediately didn’t look as good as other places. The dish looked very saucy. Most places make this dish «dry fried» so it’s usually not wet/​saucy. It was okay, and I guess I would order this dish again here, but this place wouldn’t be my first choice to get this dish. When this dish is made «dry fried,» the salt and flavorings on the rice cakes are much more pronounced and tasty.
So, now for the Shan Dong dumplings. YUMMY! You come here for these dumplings for sure! I guess that’s why they call it Dumpling House. I like trying my foods plain, without dipping sauces to taste the flavors and to see if a dipping sauce/​extra flavor is really needed. These dumplings, which were made with pork and chunks of shrimp and pan fried, didn’t need the dipping sauce. However, I usually like my dumplings with a vinegar sauce, so I did used the sauce, but felt that the sauce was missing a little something, either ginger or scallions. The sauce seemed a little flat.
One thing that I really didn’t like was the extreme thirst that I felt following the meal. Whenever I feel this way, I know that the food was laden with MSG. I noticed it again the next day when I ate my leftover rice cakes. That does not bode well with me.
I would come back here again to get the Shan Dong dumplings. I’m not sure if I would get other items since there seems to be a lot of MSG in the food.

I was impressed with Dumpling House. We went on a Friday night when it was packed, and yet we still only had to wait for (barely) 15 minutes! We didn’t feel rushed while we were eating either.
We got somewhat obscure menu items, but 4 out of the 5 things we had were delicious. Soup dumplings were great, as were some rice cake dish and Northern noodle salad. Stir-​fried vegetables were solid. The one dish we did not like was the three cups chicken; the sauce was cloyingly sweet and the chicken had unpredictable bits of bone hanging around in it. I can’t comment on how authentic the food was, but it was pretty tasty. This is definitely not health food though… everything was pretty oily/​salty/​MSG-​y.
I appreciate that we were seated relatively quickly, and not rushed through our meal. Even amongst all the madness, the servers took time to wipe down our table when they noticed some tea had dripped, for example.

Words you don’t associate with delicious dumpling eatery: spacious, clean, and well lit. Dumpling House is these things. The crowd was huge by 6pm when we went on a weekday night, but the place is big enough to hold everybody. The place is loud and filled with families with hungry small children and groups with hungry small adults (me) alike. So don’t bring a date here, but maybe your roommate or your sweatpants.
Get the shangdong style dumplings (山东煎饺) — crispy, HOT, juicy, and a really generous portion. We also got the pork and leek dumplings (steamed instead of pan-​fried) which were also delicious. Our orders came out within 5 minutes.
All the other items are the menu are just okay (we also got their rice cakes and fried rice), so I would stick to the items this restaurant is named after.
No website but the menu is here:

I thought it was a pretty legit chinese establishment. It has the right amount of casual food preparation, with ingredients that have a texture that makes you think this is a home cooked meal (as opposed to straight from a can). I do wish there was a tad less oil. Would order again.
The soup dumpling lived up to expectations. The onions and beef had a bit more onion to beef than I’d like. Water spinach did its job filling the vegetable slot.

Food: 4 Stars
Service: 3 Stars
The best chinese food you can get near Harvard Square besides Yenching. It is usually crowded during the high traffic times but has a fair amount of seating inside.
As can be expected, service isn’t great but the food is quite delicious. They have great dumplings and xiao long bao. Highly recommend coming with friends and ordering a few of them together as a group. They come out fresh and taste like they were made in house so that’s always a good sign.