Shanghai Dumpling Shop

Dim sum for dinner? I’m there. My friend and I were craving dumplings so we drove 40 minutes from Dublin to Millbrae.
The original Shanghai steamed dumplings with pork is the best deal. You get 10 pieces in a traditional bamboo steamer for approximately $ 10. We also ordered the crab and pork dumplings and couldn’t taste the difference. Don’t bother paying the $ 3 extra. We also got the chive dumplings and bok choy with black mushrooms. Take-​out only for dinner.

Pro
+ good food
+ fast service
Con
— inconstant service. The servers just don’t care. They won’t greet you. They will avoid eye contact.
— long wait. 20 minute minimum.
— dirty chairs and floor
— the server gave our order of green onion pancake to the next table. After the next table touched it with their chopsticks, the server tried to take it away and give it to us. Gross! I had to send it back and ask them to make a new one. But I’m not sure if they did or if they spat in our food. Disappointing.

A for Acceptable.
Good if you’re looking for some Shanghai food. Their shao long bao is not bad. Love what I call Shanghai SPAM (cured pork) here. Dip that in vinegar and mmmm mm mmmm. Chao leen go, fan tune (savory rice roll), dao jerng (soy milk), yao tiu, lion head meatball, are all regular dishes my family and I will get here.
Unfortunately this is not the best place to get shanghai thick noodles. The noodle texture is horrible.
Salty pork with vegetable rice clay pot, a staple Shanghai dish is pretty bomb here.
Also make sure you eat the head of their salty fried cod fish.
Basically come here to get a stuffing of starch when you’re hungry and want a semi-​decent meal.
However, it’s pretty packed for lunch on the weekends. So prepare to wait like every other Chinese restaurant in Millbrae

I come here every week. I have tried other shanghainese restaurants but none are this consistent. There may be better XLB out there but you won’t be disappointed if you try the ones here. They’re a little lean on the broth, but that’s how I like them. The price my be a couple bucks higher than other places but I think it’s worth the extra change. This is a consistent establishment with great authentic food in a nice town. Just go.

When I walked in, no one greeted me. I took a menu by myself, when ready to order, 1 waiter handed me a check to pay without saying a word with a facial expression of a hard day at work, another waiter gave me food to go, I said again thank you and no response, no smile. I couldn’t believe the price as I found it be high price and food quality I found is so low compare to other Chinese restaurants. I left w a bad feeling about my decision to order there. This was my first and will be my last time.
除了餐点不好吃之外服务态度也很差！

This place has some really awesome XLB (AKA: Chinese Soup Dumplings). I have no problem traveling all the way from the East/​South Bay just to hit this spot up. Im pretty simple, I grab the XLB, Pork Buns & Shanghai Style Noodles. There is no hiding it, this place is mainly liked for the XLB and not much else.
Service is ok, I have no complaints. There is usually a wait but they move tables fairly quick. Dont take it the wrong way if they hover by your table when they give you the bill, people are outside waiting for the table so wrap it up and move on… lol
Parking in the area can be a bit hard to find, they dont have a private lot.

My friend and I came here for dinner. We enjoyed the food, but it didn’t hit the spot we were expecting it to. It had such high praise on Unilocal so we decided to try it. I personally think there are ones in SF that are better.
The Shanghai noodles we ordered with the pork chops was disappointing. The pork was very breaded and not much meat. I think you’re better off without the pork chops and just get the noodles

Since I’m around the area, I love to order take out from here if I’m not feeling too well to eat out.
The Shanghai dumplings are obviously amazing! The hot and sour soup is definitely worth ordering. I occasionally order sweet soy milk and it never disappoints. I also order steamed buns, rice cakes, and stir fried noodles Shanghai style. The food is always good!
Sometimes during lunch and dinner there is a wait depending what time but it’s never too long!

Small restaurant so expect to not get seated right away. There was a less than 15 minute wait when i went in so I decided to walk around the corner to buy some boba to pass time. When I came back my friends & I noticed that our name has already been called so we talked to the employee & he kindly seated us right away. It’s nice to know that even if you miss you name call, they will still seat you.
We ordered:
–2 XLB (1 pork, 1 crab)
–string green beans
–minced pork with noodles
This was my first time having XLB & it won’t be my last! Each plate comes with 10 pieces each. It may look small, but it will fill you up! It was so flavorful & the sauce you dip it with compliments it so well. Definitely use the dipping sauce with it cos it will taste pretty bland without it. My favorite has got to be the crab meat one. You can really taste the crab! The pork was good as well but didn’t stand out as much.
The string green beans were good but if you ever have green beans from San Tung in SF, it’s better there. Although, the green beans here were less oily & greasy which is why I enjoyed it.
The mince pork with noodles was pretty bland & tasteless. When you mix in the minced pork it all went to the bottom. It has thinly sliced cucumbers in it which I wasn’t too fond of, so the next time I would ask without it. I decided to add some hot sauce to the dish & it tasted 10x better!
As for the service, if you’re Chinese & you speak to them in Cantonese then they will definitely treat you better & service you more. I’ve noticed when we had an issue because one of our XLB didn’t come out, they fixed it right away.

It felt like they fed us day old food (with the exception of the fried threaded bread).
RECOMMEND:
Fried Threaded Bread
+ freshly deep fried, crispy both inside (where the bread is twisted) and outside
+ delicious with condense milk
— only one loaf, i wanted more
DO NOT RECOMMEND:
Shanghai Steamed Dumplings (XLB)
+ homemade
— not a lot of soup
Lion Head Meatball
— too bland (my friend thought it was too gingery)
Spare Ribs Shanghainese Chow Mein
— 5 pieces of spare ribs
— some were COLD (like from the fridge)
— meat was HEAAVILY breaded so your really eating lukewarm/​cold breading
— breading was not crispy
— noodles were lukewarm, like it had been sitting on a counter for awhile but they served it to us 5 minutes after we ordered…
Pan Fried Pork Buns
+ homemade
— barely pan fried, so bottom wasn’t crispy (not soggy tho)

One of the better spots for xlb on the peninsula. The rest of the dishes you can find better elsewhere though.

There are always long lines here and for a dumpling shop I expected the dumplings to be full of flavor and have that soup inside that good dumplings are known for.
The service is slow and the dumplings we had were preheated. Almost tastes like frozen dumplings that they warm up, or steam up.
I tasted a lot of fat and not much flavor. No one in my table thought it was very good.

My go to place for shanghai dumplings! Super affordable and great portions!
Came here many times since Millbrae is my hometown. This place gets pretty packed for lunch and dinner esp during the cold weathers I noticed. Recently came here with my boyfriend, he loved it so much.
We ordered:
Shanghai dumplings: delicious, had a lot of juice and was hot
Dandan noodles soup: very favorable, saucy, big bowl definitely worth your dollar bills
Beef noodle soup: has a kick of spice, tasty, big portion, fatty beef!
Spicy dumplings: my FAVE and will always order, great mix of peanut sauce and spicy sauce, compliments super well
Pig ears: it was OK, they were too soft, kinda too oily
Baked crispy beard with condense milk: well done with crispy, great compliment with condensed milk
My boyfriend and I tend to over order cause we like to try everything, but all together the bill was around $ 45 dollars and we had a lot of to-​gos! Recommend this place. They also have this mixed veggies and meats with a pancake dish that is pretty good and also their lion meat balls!

tldr; They have the best xiao long bao (shanghai soup dumplings /​XLB) in the Bay Area and a good selection of authentic Shanghai dishes. (source: I’m a Shanghai native!)
WOW (⁵⁄₅):
XLB (xiao long bao /​shanghai soup dumplings /​小笼包): THE BEST! I’ve tried a lot of XLB from places in the Bay Area and every where else has fallen flat. You need to eat this when it’s piping hot or the skin will harden. Just nibble a small hole out of the side and sip the soup out before dipping it into the ginger flavored black vinegar. Perfection! The soup and pork are flavored very well and the skin is quite thin; it’s as authentic as it can get outside of Shanghai. Note: There are 10 instead of the traditional 6 which most restaurants serve.
***
Some other XLB places I’ve tried stack ranked in terms of authenticity:
I Dumpling (Redwood City) — reasonably good
Koi Palace (Daly City) — not bad
Hong Kong Lounge (San Francisco) — meh
Little Shanghai Restaurant (San Mateo) — brings shame to the name
Panda Dumpling (San Carlos) — oh dear god no
China Bee (San Mateo) — what was this even?
There’s probably a few more but the scarring has allowed me to forget.
***
OKAY (3.5÷5):
Pan fried pork dumplings (生煎包) (3.5÷5): This dish is better than other places in the Bay Area which isn’t really saying much. The pork is well-​flavored and they serve it with ginger flavored black vinegar. However, the filling isn’t soupy enough, there’s too much bun to meat ratio and it’s not pan fried enough to get a really crispy bottom.
Sauteed eel: I was surprised to see this as it’s not a common dish in most Chinese restaurants, but truly a Shanghai staple. Get this if you want to try something unique. It’s nothing like unagi sushi which is the eel that you’re probably used to. The dish is stir fried with bamboo shoots and green onions. The flavor isn’t developed enough unfortunately and is far oilier than it should be.
Bamboo shoot and pork shank soup (腌笃鲜): Personally I loved this dish because it truly reminds me of home. My mom cooked this when I was a kid and it’s one of those dishes that’s always better homemade than at a restaurant. The soup is incredible as it’s pure fatty pork broth. The small pieces of pork and cured meat are delicious if you dip it in a bit of soy sauce for additional flavor. Unfortunately the main shortcoming is the bamboo which isn’t fresh (probably canned).
DON’T GET (²⁄₅):
Fried buns with condense milk (²⁄₅): I don’t even know why I got this since it’s a traditional Hong Kong dessert. The buns were slightly overfried and made the interior a bit dry. The condensed milk attempted to cover up this but the overall impression I got was stale bread.

1 – 1.5 STARS.
I never understood everyone’s obsession with Shanghai Dumpling Shop. Their XLB isn’t impressive at all, the other dishes are bland, and the service sucks.
I had been to this location a couple years ago, and we visited again last Saturday. We were promptly seated and then we ordered: 2 orders of XLB (10 pieces for $ 9.99), string beans ($ 11 – 12), salt and pepper fish fillet ($ 12 – 13), and beef in clay pot ($ 13). The XLB had barely any soup inside of them, and the wrapper was so thin that we broke so many of them. What little juice was in there spilled. The string beans were ridiculously bland, and I had to eat them with chili paste. The salt and pepper fish was horrible. The only good thing was the beef in clay pot. It had great taste and we ordered some rice to eat with it.
Service wasn’t good at all. I know it was a little later and they were getting ready to close (we got there around 8:15 — 8:30 and they closed at 9), so they were grumpy and barely acknowledged our requests/​asks. Oh well, what can you do. For a $ 70 dinner for 3, we were pretty disappointed with our experience.
Anyway, definitely not coming back. If you’re looking for good XLB, just go to Shanghai Dumpling in Cupertino. You will be much more satisfied with the food there.

Ordered take-​out from this mom and pop shop today next to SFO, and it’s safe to say that I’ll be coming back here.
XLB (⁴⁄₅): Unfortunately I had to drive 45 minutes home before eating them, so they weren’t hot by then, but they were still good and they would have been even better fresh. Soup was not that oily and the meat was delicious. When I picked up my food, I saw a woman make the xlb by hand so I know they’re authentic!
Shanghai noodles (⁴⁄₅): also really tasty. Not bland like others I’ve had. Of course, there’s not much meat /​veggies so be sure to order other things too to get a balanced meal.
Green beans (³⁄₅): Aite. Not much to say about vegetables. lol.
Beef and broccoli (²⁄₅) was more broccoli than it was beef. about 2:1 ratio. maybe even 3:1… tastes fine but if you want a meat dish, get something else.

Smack in the middle of downtown Millbrae, this little dumpling shop is quite dear to my heart because I grew up eating here.
I am no XLB connoisseur and their XLB is probably not critically acclaimed worldwide but it sure hits the spot in the mid-​peninsula where tasty XLB is hard to come by. The only other options in the area are the HK style XLB that is always dry with mushy skin. It’s skin is not the thinnest nor is it the strongest but the soup and meat inside are really what keeps me coming here over other places. The meat is savory and tasty, its soup juicy enough to fill a soup spoon. Sure I’d rank the XLB in SoCal and Taiwan above this place but this place does the job for me till i can make that delicious trip to the glory lands.
This place gets busy during the peak hours of lunch and dinner so be prepared to wait or come after busy hours.
I will most likely keep coming here to get my intermediate XLB fix till I can’t anymore so I hope it says around for a long time.

Best Shanghai dumplings outside of Shanghai.
They don’t have a large variety of dumplings but have a full menu with all kinds of Shanghai food.
I would not consider it a destination restaurant but when near SFO Millbrae is the 1^st exit off 101 south

I’ve had this place «Bookmarked» for the longest and upon a last minute dinner decision, Shanghai Dumpling Shop surpassed my expectations. I’m not sure if it was because we came close to closing, (8:30 pm to be exact) but everything we had was so fresh and authentic tasting– I’m an immediate fan! There’s something so comforting about food that tastes like how grandma used to make it…
Out of all the dishes we ordered, my favorites were the xiao long bao and nian gao. The XLB had a fresh-​soft external outer layer and warm soupy seasoned pork inner. As for the nian gao, well that’s just glutinous goodness! Next visit I’ll try their beef noodle soup, which looked equally delicious.

I’ve been here like 4 times. This last time I was really disappointed. After 3 successful trips here, I took my friend here to get some dumplings. I have a favorite place in the city that I prefer to go to, but this place was more in between us and had been pretty consistent for the first three trips.
Normally there is a wait and you have to sign your name. That’s usually a good sign that the food is worth waiting for. We waited about 20 – 30 min to sit down and when we ordered the food was really bland. It lacked flavor that I was expecting. The Shanghai noodles were a bit rubbery… The broccoli beef was just sub par to pretty much any other place I’ve been for Chinese. The dumplings held up but we’re not enough to save this meal.
The service was fine, but with California being in a drought you will have to ask for water. They do start you out with tea though, which is nice. I would still go back and give them another shot, but I was seriously disappointed this time around.