Dumpling Hut

The bun and dumpling are good.
The noodle needs improvement.
I will try next time

Dumpling and bun meat has no taste at all, If they are proud from Northern china which was claimed on their sign, I would say they should re-​learn how to make northern dishes back home. Removed from my selection forever.

Very bad customer service and restaurant maintenance (I do not want to think what the kitchen looks like). The owners looks pissed off with no sign of friendliness. The place was nearly empty on a weekend night and everyone ate in silence. The only noise comes from the kitchen where the staff talks loudly and skyping. The foods are very pricey here, and they constantly run out of simple items such as peanuts and congee (which are the only two dishes I like here). And if you pay by card there are no option to give customized tip on their app, they force you to give 15% or higher.

A decent dimsum place but nothing special. Place was clean and food was okay. However, it took them 15 minutes to serve my order — pretty slow considering I was the only customer dining in. The other group was getting ready to leave. Friendly staff though. Just average in general.

One of the few places that was open on Christmas that wasn’t super crowded at 8pm! Our first time there. Their xiao long baos were GREAT. One of the best I’ve had.
We also ordered the green onion pancake (the green onions didn’t look very fresh since they were more black than green), but I guess they tasted pretty good since everyone at our table devoured them up.
We also got chives dumplings, pork potstickers, and a beef pancake. All were great, especially the beef pancake!
The only downsides:
* Dirty vinegar bottle needs some cleaning
* I asked for hot water and they apologized, saying they were boiling some new water (another customer wanted some also), but I never got any during the entire meal
* Several of the plates were chipped (see pic). Time to invest in some new ones.
* Cash only
FYI, if you want hot sauce, you have to ask for it. There are none on the tables or even visible on the counters.

If you’re looking for home-​style flavors, easy food, this place is it. I think by comparison, Dumpling Inn is more restaurant status than this one.
It seems that others have experience under-​par service. My experience was decent, although my requirement for service is as long as you don’t mess up or delay my orders, I am pretty easy going. However, keep up your service so ppl keep coming back!
Order of the lamb dumplings, special crispy tianjin pancake, and the cold noodles:
lamb dumplings are solid, moderately seasoned and flavors is not extremely gamey, dumpling skin is cooked just right.
the special crispy tianjin pancake was unusual, but IMO, it is crispy carb in a soft carb and some sauce. I wasn’t captured by it and probably don’t prefer it in the future.
the cold noodles were delicious, noodles are al dente and the toppings are fresh, the sesame sauce is also fresh and seasoned.
I’d come back for some noodles and XLB in the future.

Very nice food from North China, especially from Tianjin! Hard to find such place in U.S. Service is not excellent because even they are nice and friendly, they do not speak or not speak well in English. Just give them sometime to improve. Will recommend especially to whoever from north of China. Will come back.
跟天津的煎饼果子和豆腐脑还是有些距离的。不过对于离开天津一段时间的人来讲还是可以解解馋的

I had lunch with my friend here recently and sadly we left sooo disappointed. The restaurant was empty when we got there and we weren’t even greeted, just pointed to a table and the server dropped off some menus. She disappeared on us for a bit until another couple came in and it appears they must have been friends with the server because all of a sudden, she perks up chatting up a storm to them. She brought water to them in glass cups with ice and also took their order. Still no one else in the restaurant and we had to get her attention to get any acknowledgement. We finally get to order but when she brought out our water we get it in plastic cups with no ice. We were so frustrated with the place that we decided to only get soup dumplings and potstickers. It takes 20 minutes for the food to come out while she stands chatting with the other party. There was another guy who brought our food to us and he was really nice, apologizing for the wait. The soup dumplings looked extremely sad and my friend found a small bug in one of hers but being extremely non confrontational, she did not want to say anything. I really wish I could have called attention to it so that it would hopefully not happen to anyone else as we will not be dining here again.

This place reminds me a lot of those sketchy noodle places in China. I really wanted to like this place and hope they can survive. But there are a lot need to be improved.
Pros: Authentic northern Chinese food (noodles and dumplings); friendly staff even though a little bit shy; ample parking comparing to other places near Convoy.
Cons: sketchy environment in general (just like many small noodle places in China); glasses and bowls are old, the plates are in different sizes; customers need to pass through the kitchen to use their restroom! the air venting in the kitchen is bad, you might need a gas mask when they are cooking spicy food; their Xiaolongbao is tasty but the soup is all over the steam-​vessel when it is served.

This place was terrible. It’s hard for me to give a place such a low rating but this place had various issues. The food was decent. The service was horrendous. The waiter looked confused, didn’t offer drinks we had to ask and just unbelievably slow paced for being the only customers there. We had to ask for our check that was written out in another language. I will NEVER return to this place.

Cash only. Friendly waiter.
Oh man, this place brought me into a state of «dissociation.» This place is super yummy for Yunnan Chinese food!
Tips: You got to ask for their spicy sauce to make your trip a fruitful experience. :D The spicy sauce definitely enhance the taste.

Wow, people are picky. The food is simple and tastes good.
We ordered the pork potstickers, pork and fennel dumplings, xiao long bao, special crispy tianjin pancake, braised pork belly sandwich, cold cucumber, pork/​egg/​shrimp dumpling, and wonton soup.
The pork potstickers were very juicy and quite good but not crisp enough on the bottom. The dumplings were pretty decent as well but the skins were thin and tended to fall apart. I did not like the tianjin pancake because the fried crueller was bready and chewy rather than crunchy.
The xiao long bao was a surprise. They were juicy and the skins were the right thickness. Wontons also tasted fresh and on point. Cucumbers were fresh and crunchy.
I wanted to try the shen jian bao, which is not on the menu, but I believe they ran out by the time we rolled in for dinner.
I would order the xiao long bao, cold cucumber, any of the boiled dumplings, and wonton soup again.

In general, pretty good. Everything fresh. Staff attentive and friendly. Didn’t take long to get food.
Had seamed pork bun, xiao long bao, pork and fennel, pork and Napa cabbage, and crispy egg pancake. Best: steamed pork bun. Worst: crispy egg pancake

Waste of time and money.
Terribly slow and less than mediocre food.
My bf brought me here after reading about this spot on EaterSD. We came around 2pm on Saturday afternoon and were seated right away. We ordered our food and waited and waited and waited. It took 35 minutes for our first dish to come out, which was the fried potstickers. They were decent but nothing to rave about or order again. Another 15 minutes passed and none of our other dishes came. After being fed up with the wait, we asked for the rest of our food to be packaged for takeout. Another 15 minutes passed before our two dishes finally arrived. The XLB skin is too thick and the filling is super bland. The beef roll was gross and the meat was sparse and had absolutely no flavor.
Even though it’s cheap, the food is just not good. I don’t understand why they were so slow since they had a full kitchen staff. The servers do try to give service– we had our water refilled about 8 times before the potstickers came out.
Maybe it will improve here? I will not be back to find out. Just go to Red Moon for your XLB fix.

I was going to go to Chaba today because it’s reliably good and I was wanting something satisfying for lunch. I spotted Dumpling Hut and of course, there can’t be a dumpling place in San Diego that I haven’t tried so I decided to meander in here first. 100% chinese clientele so I was hoping it was going to be good. But it was just disappointing on so many levels!
The foods that were supposed to be hot were lukewarm and the foods that were supposed to be cold were also lukewarm. The xlb has a lot of filling (too much since people should be able to eat these in 1 bite), has thick skin, and little to no soup. The jah jan noodles come out looking like their korean counterpart but taste like neither the traditional chinese or the korean noodles. The noodles themselves were the most enjoyable part of the dish, they have a good bite on them. The sauce was too salty and the meat was worst part. It looked and tasted like the meat in chili after it has been sitting in the pot too long. The cold cucumber I ate all of simply because I never met a cucumber I didn’t eat, but it was really not cold and was not seasoned nearly enough.
Really disappointed, was hoping to have a new go to for xlb and for some old school chinese eats, but alas, Dumpling Hut is not the dumpling you’re looking for.

My friend sent me an online article raving about the opening of Dumpling Hut. It said it’s based out of Toronto, and I’ve been to Toronto and everything. EVERYTHING I ate amazed me.
I really wanted to give this place more stars given that the menu is really cheap. An order of soup dumplings for $ 6.99?! C’mon, that’s tough to beat. I split an order of an onion pancake, soup dumplings, pork and fennel dumplings, and seafood fried dumplings with 2 others. All the dumplings were popular to our waiter as I asked him which products are favored most. He said he didn’t know why the pork and fennel was popular, and honestly I didn’t know why it was popular either when I had it =\ It’s exactly what it is, a pork and fennel dumpling and wrapped in a thick, unseasoned ball of boiled dough. An order was about 12 of these. We ate 4.
Onion pancake: Probably won’t order this again. Every onion pancake I’ve had has been more on the savory side, but I don’t mind changes to spice it up. But cinnamon spice?! Can’t say the flavors blended nicely.
Soup dumplings (8 per order): The dough is too thick for me. I ate 2 and I was done. The meat inside was good, as well as the broth/​soup. I was pleased (:
Seafood fried dumpling (8 per order (i think)): I’d say it’s the best item that we ordered. I could see the pieces of shrimp on the inside and when is anything fried ever bad? (Don’t answer that…)
Overall, it was mediocre. Cheap, but mediocre. I didn’t have a bad experience, the waiter was really nice (spoke little english, nbd), and my bill came out to be about $ 26. I probably ate 7 dumplings total out of 3 full orders of dumplings. Kinda feels like those struggle-​on-​a-​budget, college-​diet or we-​gettin-​crazy-​tonight meals. Not my type of party, but we’ll see if I’ll be back to try more.

Sis and I have had epic auto-​correct fails. Case in point, I texted her that we’re at Dumping Hut for lunch. I don’t think San Diego can ever, EVER, have enough restaurants specializing in dumplings. Or anything dumpling related (be it xiao long bao, sheng jian bao, etc). Dumpling Hut seemed like a possible dumpling contender as, well, they have Dumpling in their restaurant name.
They open at 11a. This location used to house another restaurant. You still get the previous restaurant’s answering machine message if you call the above menu’s phone # (see pic). It is Dumpling Hut’s phone # but I think they just haven’t changed the previous answering message.
Friend let me do the ordering. She commented that it would be hard for a non-​Chinese speaking customer like her to order here.
We tried:
STEAMED PORK BUN $ 4.99
There’s six to an order. I asked the server if these are made in house and he said yes. I thought the pork filling was alright but just under seasoned. I wanted a bit more umppfh to the filling — maybe add scallions, a tad of garlic, perhaps ginger. The dough has a nice chew to it but tasted bland. We tried to dip the buns into the side of black vinegar but that didn’t do much to help these little things.
SPICY BEEF NOODLE SOUP $ 6.99
Unfortunately, the spicy beef noodle soup here wasn’t very good. The soup tasted thin and barely had any beef flavor. The cubes of beef flesh were cold (as if added last minute to almost lukewarm soup). There was a considerable amount of nice thick noodles to this dish though. If you like noodles, then you might enjoy this beef noodle soup. The noodles were cooked fine but there was just too much of it.
XIAO LONG BAO $ 6.99
I had seen a few pictures of their xiao long bao. Their XLBs were plump and quite large. I was giddy with excitement when these arrived at our table as the previous two items were a bit disappointing. But I noticed something right away that isn’t a good sign for soup dumplings, most of the soup from the XLB had leaked (into the tin serving container) already. There was barely any soup in any of the XLB. I did wish they served freshly julienned ginger with their xiao long baos. The ginger provides a nice tart bite to each XLB that I usually look forward to.
FRESH PORK POTSTICKERS $ 6.99
There’s eight to an order and this was the last order to arrive at our table. The potstickers came out piping hot to our table. I thought this was the best dish that we had that meal. Friend agreed but not happily. She said the pork filling was fine but was just boring. She prefers the dumplings that have more cabbage or some sort of vegetable mixed with the ground pork. The potstickers were pan fried nicely.
A few notes:
— there are only 3 condiments on each table: black pepper, salt, vinegar. They DO have hot sauce (see pic) but just make sure to ask for it
— service is slow but they just opened so make sure to allot more time if you come here for a ‘quick’ lunch (because quick ain’t happening if you know what I mean)
— we saw Cash Only sign hence why we paid with cash
— parking sucks
The total bill was $ 28 which isn’t too bad for four dishes. We had quite a bit of left overs which isn’t a great sign if you came in hungry. I’m not sure if I’d come back anytime soon but that’s just my sentiment at the current moment. Perhaps other items on their menu would be better picks than what we tried out that day.

The only real go-​to dumpling alternative until recently was Dumpling Inn. And then Myung-​Inn Dumplings opened. So I was super excited to hear about this place when I was checking out Eater San Diego.
I’m a huge fan of Xiao Long Bao and Potstickers. Xiao Long Bao in general need to have the delicious, full of flavor broth. Din Tai Fung is a good reference point. Dumpling Inn is pretty good for San Diego. Sadly, I was not impressed with the ones here at Dumpling Hut.
The Xiao Long Bao had a nice light skin to them. The meat was dense and not particularly moist. There was no broth/​soup. None. At all. The pork and napa dumplings (which are boiled) had some tasty soup inside. The skin was thick. Again, the meat was dense. The best thing was probably the pork potstickers. The skin was thin and light (like the xiao long bao) and they had a very nice crispy fried layer to them. The meat was moderately flavored, but again, also dense and not moist. Lastly, we had the green onion pancakes. These were nicely crisped. But they could have used more green onion. For 3 dumplings and the pancake, it came out to around $ 27.
Service needs to be improved. There were 3 cooks in the back and it took about 15 – 20 minutes for all the food to come out. And it trickled out. First the pork/​napa dumplings, then the potstickers, the pancake and finally the Xiao Long Bao. You had to ask for refills. And they provided no spoons — as I thought there would be some soup inside the XLB! There’s also a sign that says cash only. But they told a few other customers they are also taking credit cards. There was some confusion with some other tables bills. When I talked to them, it was their 3^rd day being open. So I hope it’s just a work in progress!
Overall, I really wanted to like this place. But, it falls into the same category for me as Myung-​Inn Dumplings. It’s just okay. This place has potential. However, my go to place will still be Dumpling Inn.

This is a small intimate little restaurant. Not to many frills. Seats about 35 to 40 people. The beverage selection is small; soft drinks mainly, want diet? They got water.
The service time between order and table was a little long, but I’m discounting that because they just opened. So be for warned…
The Dumplings are made in house and can be purchased in frozen bags to take home and enjoyed at a later date…
We sampled the dumplings and the fried gyoza, both excellent. The dumplings we had were pork and fennel; recommended to us by our server. A different variation from what I normally order, loved it. The gyoza/​pot stickers were pork and shrimp that was complimented with a few drops of the table vinegar.
Finally, we had the Xiao Lum Bao… can’t miss order. The soup inside was tasty, the filling delicious… just watch out, because it is served hot and well, I couldn’t wait… I think even the most discriminating dumpling coniseauer will approve of this place. Its another little piece of China right here is San Diego.
Best of all its not going to burn your wallet. Everything, I mean EVERYTHING on the menu is at a reasonable price.
I can’t wait to sample the rest of the menu.

Yesterday I started salivating as I read on San Diego Eater that a new dumpling place had just opened on Clairemont Mesa Blvd. Could this place be a real competitor to Dumpling Inn?
Pros:
–Menu is unique. Besides having the usual dumplings, it’s refreshing to see unique breakfast items on the menu.
My date and I shared the Tianjin special egg pancake and baked braised pork muffin. The Tianjin pancake didn’t look that appealing to the eye, but was surprisingly very delicious. The baked braised pork muffin was more like an English muffin filled with chopped pork. Yummy!
–Variety of dumplings are better than Dumpling Inn. Dumpling Inn offers less than 10 varieties. The «Hut» has over 20 different kinds of potstickers, dumplings, and baos!
We went a little crazy and ordered the xiao long bao, pork and napa dumplings, and steamed pork buns. The XLB tasted like Dumpling Inn. The pork and napa dumplings were good too, but the steamed pork buns were a little to dry and doughy for my taste. My date enjoyed them though.
Cons:
–Service needs to be improved asap!
It was a little awkward to be handed a menu, then have the waiter stand there waiting to take our order. Can we get a few minutes to check everything out?
No refills on the water and it was difficult to get any attention after the food came out.
No air conditioning. With summer here, I hope they won’t be skimping on the AC, because the overhead fans just won’t do it.
Bill issues. I was handled the correct hand written check, paid the bill in cash immediately, then received less change than I was supposed to. Essentially, when they rang up the bill in the cash register, they rang up someone else’s bill. Upon bringing me my change, I was short changed $ 3.20. This was straightened out immediately, but it just puts a sour note on the experience.
Is it really cash only? It was weird, because they do have a sign that reads «Cash Only» at the register. But when the bill was brought to me he asked if I was going to pay with a credit card. (There was a little magnetic strip device attached to an iPhone. I would still bring enough cash to cover your meal, just in case.)
All in all, I understand they have some kinks to work out. I was definitely impressed with the food, and I’ll seriously consider updating this review to 4 stars if the service improves.