Food on Fridays: Going for Dumplings in the Village

Today on Food on Fridays we travel to the village to take a taste of Taiwanese dumplings.

Well, the “village” here is the University Village, or the “U Village”. That’s a big (and getting bigger) outdoor shopping mall in another part of Seattle. It’s actually not that far away from where we’re staying, but I have been referring to it as my alternate home in Seattle as I have been to the U Village far too frequently these past 4 weeks. You see, that mall is where there’s an Apple Store, which has been the site of many a trip with my ailing computer.

But for once we did NOT visit the Apple store on a trip to that area. Nope, instead we went there in order to go to a restaurant that specializes in house-made Taiwanese dumplings. There’s actually a window into the kitchen in this place, where you can watch a small army of chefs preparing the dumplings of various shapes and sizes. Talk about fresh, eh?

The dumplings are mostly steamed (and served) in bamboo baskets, as opposed to fried. You order by ticking off what you want on a list, which is sort of like some styles of ordering sushi. By default, most of the dumplings come as a serving of 10 pieces, so it’s best to go with someone. Between us, Chris and I had no troubling polishing off 20 dumplings (10 each of two different kinds), plus a serving of green beans with garlic sauce (which were on a plate, not in a dumpling), and a serving of just 2 warm buns with black sesame paste as dessert. Photos below.

Note that the dumplings that aren’t green in the photos below were filled with soup. Yes, soup. I’d never had anything like that before. But boy was that good! The veggie dumplings (the green ones) tasted kind of healthy, and the green beans were good enough, but the soup dumplings and the black sesame buns — those are worth going back for. In fact, this was actually a return trip for Chris, as he went there a couple of weeks ago with an old acquaintance from Stanford and said it was so good, we had to try it together. Thanks, Chris – you were right! So without further ado, I give you the photos – to give you a virtual Food on Fridays taste of Taiwanese dumplings.