Din Ding Dumpling House’s Union City location off to good start

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Popular xiaochi restaurant, and contender for the best XLB in the bay area, Din Ding Dumpling House recently opened their second location, in the same Union City mall as Sama Uyghur, Yang‘s beef noodles, and Marina Food supermarket, a few blocks from BART. There’s a laminated picture menu, and you mark your order with a pencil on a paper menu. They are closed on Wednesdays.

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Tall and curvy, the shrimp, pork, and pumpkin shao mai were topped with a small shrimp, and the meatball below the neck exuded a good amount of juice, so much mthat I had to eat these like an XLB, sucking out the juices before attempting to eat the remainder of the the large dumpling in two bites. I didn’t taste pumpkin, and thankfully no pumpkin pie seasoning :slight_smile:

Beijing’s smoked pork was charcuterie heaven. The flavor tilted more towards seasoning than smoke and there was enough internal fat to melt onto the flesh with every bite.

Cold fungus salad was primarily those cup shaped jelly fungus, with a few pieces of white fungus in the mix. Light coating of dressing wasn’t the typical storm of acidity, and had more developed flavors – oil from frying the complementary peanuts, maybe?

Noodles matched the quality of the Fremont location. I thought that the noodles were hand pulled at their original location, and these were fairly but not completely uniform with no rough ends, and I never saw anyone in the plexiglass enclosed kitchen thumping away. The first server I spoke to said they use a noodle machine at the current and original location. As I worked through my bowl of noodles, stretchy under the weight of sauce with a good chew, I was sure these were hand pulled. A second server told me that they are indeed hand pulled and I didn’t push the matter further— ignorance is bliss.

Topping my noodles was a tomato egg sauce, which I liked better than a recent version at Terra Cotta Warrior, which was also good. DD’s had more umami, and maybe more sugar, and a ketchup like quality but only possibly ketchup.

Yelpers report that the Fremont location gives complimentary mango pudding as dessert, but I didn’t see that here.

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Wow- high praises. What is your current list of best XLB in the Bay?

Heh, the last time I devoted stomach space to XLB was February! I still haven’t made it to Dumpling Time.

For then and later 2017, Din Ding and Bing’s Dumpling top my list. Of non-standard ones, although I prefer their SJB, I-Shanghai Delight’s shrimp and pork or spicy pork are excellent (their sweet base works better with these than their standard XLB).

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