Interestingly, several of these look exactly like the offerings at the old old Winsor – the Chinatown one.
I was in Chinatown a couple of hours ago, but we chose to lunch at Dumpling Cafe. Their duck buns are still excellent, and the soup and filling in their soup dumplings very tasty – but the wrappers are rustic and take quite a bit of nibbling at the top. We also had their stir fried noodles with mustard greens and pork – another winner, but the noodles are rice, not wheat.
Thanks for sharing! Great pics.
I noticed the Quincy Winsor picking up the New Winsor moniker when I was still doing the occasional UberEats delivery mid to tail end of COVID, and this was how it was noted on the app. I always wondered if it was more because people were getting confused as to which Winsor they were ordering from, and maybe accidentally ordered from one or the other unintentionally!
I guess I never noticed “New” before.
The 3 websites also seemed odd.
But I think it was the change in size and quality of the dim sum that I noticed the most.
We had a nice lunch at Kung Fu Kitchen at Coolidge Corner on Monday, no pics I’m afraid.
Ordered pork/crab soup dumplings, pork gyoza and the house ramen stir fry.
We enjoyed it very much and plan to bring the young ones on the next trip so we can order more stuff.
They were pretty busy for a Monday, although it was a holiday. Def recommend if you’re in the area.
The beef scallion pancakes at Kung fu kitchen are particularly good if you like crispy. You can also order a soy hard boiled egg as a side if you’re in the mood.
I’m afraid to go into Dumpling Cafe with all the health violations they seem to keep getting (check their Yelp listing)
Took me a couple of minutes to find this so in case anyone else is interested: https://www.yelp.com/inspections/dumpling-cafe-boston
I’m a fan of the place but I can’t say I’m exactly shocked that they’re playing fast and loose with best practices. I feel like it’s a sort of Nietzschean dice roll with some of these places: I’ll probably be okay, but if not, I’ll gain a new resistance that will help me next time!
Seriously though, I think Dumping Cafe is pretty clean compared with some of the places of old. Did you ever visit Wai Wai? Delicious meat…cut on a deeply, deeply scarred cutting board (you could see it through the front window), served on plates often with cracks running down the middle. And then there was the infamous Taiwan Cafe bathroom, absolutely filthy and featuring a large patched up hole through which you could plainly see a large number of roaches. And yet, I went for lunch every couple of weeks for a few years. (Bit of a headscratcher in retrospect but I really, really loved the beef with long peppers.)
I once bit down on a roach in a popular Chinese restaurant in San Francisco (R&G lounge). It was hiding in the xo sauce 
I guess kitchens in the basement are always suspect. But there’s also human error sometimes (I saw one of the ladies who was filling dimsum takeout orders at Good Mong Kok in SF take the tongs she was using to put dimsum into customer takeout boxes and used them to pick up a dumpling and put it into her own mouth). Yum!
Back in the early 80’s I had a roommate who waitressed at a well-known Chinese restaurant in Cambridge (who I won’t name but will point out that it was and still is on Main Street a few blocks outside of Central Sq and was frequented by the MIT community).
The workstaff had a code-name for roaches when they saw one in the dining area: “friends”. They would use it to communicate between each other. As in “I just saw a ‘friend’ on table 5.”
I can’t imagine how endemic roaches must have been there that they had to resort to that.
Quality Control!
This is starting to feel uncomfortable to me.
At least she didn’t use her hands 
Wai Wai is for me the OG hole-in-the-wall joints that Chowhounders and foodies sought out. My family and I had eaten there for years when we wanted a quick lunch. The owner passed a few years ago, long after both restaurants were shuttered, post his retirement.
Not defending non-compliance on key contamination and cleanliness requirements, but many of these smaller family-run restaurants in the downtown/Chinatown area do have it rough. Old, aging spaces that haven’t been upgraded, or sometimes even have the space to do the proper upgrade. I get how challenging it is to keep those places to the same standards used for beautifully newly built out dining rooms and kitchens.
I have seen far worse violations than this, too. A lot are not directly related to food handling/food safety.
One of the shiniest new places is the Jumbo on Comm ave in Allston.
I did like their crispy sesame shrimp roll. Duck was dry. Parking is difficult though. I’m told some people park in the nearby Super 88.Boneless Bbq pork at Jumbo was hard and dry, like shoe leather. Kitchen doesn’t open until 11am.
Can I do a grandpa/grandma grumble, and say that restaurants that are trying to cater to the younger generation that can’t open earlier than 11am? shakes fist and screams at clouds
Perfectly fine for other lunch driven food places, but dim sum always has a strong association with morning foods that it’s been disappointing. Even when they open their doors, there’s almost no food or they’re not ready for a good 30 minutes. I would say the same of the newer ‘Cha Chaan Teng’ - or HK style cafes - that have opened. These are absolutely busy in the mornings through lunch and a good part of their menus are often foods you think of as breakfast foods, and they don’t open until 11am either.
Yes China Pearl is another offender.
EUUUUUGH! (yes I was one of that MIT community and know exactly which restaurant you mean 
)
