Dumpling Time San Francisco

Hmmm, seems SF is crushing it on COVID and changing their color tier as fast as fall leaves on trees. With that comes the re-opening of restaurants to dine-in, at super limited capacity of course. Good/bad news for both places to eat and people who like to eat out inside, particularly with cooler days ahead. One has to make the decision whether it is worth it for themselves and those who are working inside the place get the food out. Honestly, I am just not at that place to do it. Eating outside at one of the parklettes is still a challenge for me so doing it inside, yeah, just not gonna happen right now. Thus I continue to do the whole take-out order in thing for my own sanity in these still crazy weird times.

Fortunately, this city is rife with places which continue to add their names to food options you can get at home, some that have been super popular dine-in spots from their inception. One such place is Dumpling Time. They pretty much hit the ground running when they opened and turned into one of those spots that does not take reservations and people will actually wait extended times just to get in—for lunch and dinner! And it isn’t even a real brunch spot in the Mission, yet still gets crowds. What up with that?!

They opened the original location down on the edge of the Design District where Source the old vegan/vegetarian used to be. I mean, not exactly a bustling neighborhood of walkable foot traffic. But people showed up in droves, particularly once word got out about their giant sized soup dumpling which became both a notable instagram worthy food gimmick and a sign of the dumpling adventures they were willing to take.

It was a place on my “list” of places to get to—eventually, but just hadn’t made it around to yet. Of course, success breeds expansion (pre-lockdown) and along came their second location a few blocks over from the original called Express Dumpling Time serving a paired down quick access selection for those who didn’t necessarily want to try everything on their menu, or wait too long for it. I didn’t get to this one either. Then along comes spot #3 in Thrive City, better known as the new Golden State Warriors arena. I though, great! It is a couple blocks from where I live, I need to go! Then lockdown and, well, no go.

Not so long ago, this location finally re-opened with their own delivery and it seemed like my window of opportunity was created to try them out without the wait, or you know, being around people. I logged on, ordered up and in about 30 minutes had my steaming and hot array of samplings to chow down on.

I couldn’t pass this one up because—RED! It’s Tom Yum a xiao long bao of pork belly and coconut milk wrapped in a beet skin colored dumpling. Normally I eschew things with coconut but it’s RED! Plus I like beets and pork belly and had hopes they would override any lingering coconut. Good thing, I really could not taste any coconut which was most likely infused in the broth inside. Not so good thing, I couldn’t really taste beet or for that matter, tell you the meat I was eating was pork belly. This isn’t to say this bad, it wasn’t as the inside was tender, the dumpling was soft without being sticky or chewy and it made for a nice fresh bite. Though if I was blindfolded and had this, I probably would not have able to tell you what is was other than a dumpling with meat and juice. Kind of the same thing I went through at that other dumpling place. I’ll chalk this one up to gimmicky food because of the color which doesn’t really add to what you get.

Siu mai is standard go to for me whenever I hit up the dim sum shops around town though usually on offer is either shrimp or pork so a mix of them seemed a good choice. Finally, one bite in and I could most definitely taste the shrimp, which sits on top, and the ground pork underneath it. I could also differentiate between them too. Both cooked well and fresh tasting. Sure, I could have dipped in some soy to add flavor but these were lovely two bite bits all good on their own. A little fishy tang from the sweet and some slightly sweet from the pork was all I needed.

I do so enjoy some pan fried dumplings and the pork gyoza was right up my alley. A tangy, slightly sweet mixture of pork, green onion, ginger and cilantro, this, like the above didn’t really need any added flavor enhancer. Added bonus, the outside still had the crunch on one side as you can see in the pic giving it a little boost of crispy texture. Another little two bite delight.

It wasn’t all dumpling as their menu includes a wider swath of dim sum offerings like bbq pork buns. These type of buns are some of my fave things at dim sum spots. You can get them in either steamed or baked form with a filling that varies from brown sauce to sweet red/orange bbq. They are great to grab and go with their meat filled packets of rice flour. Kind of like a Chinese Hot Pocket as it were. This one is char-siu roasted pork belly in a steamed bun with a light mix of the brown sauce, kind of like a gravy made with corn starch, pork grease, Chinese all spice, maybe some hoisin or soy sauce? Hard to tell since there wasn’t much of it. (Though here they offer a seared version instead of baked) I’ve had A LOT of these over the years in SF and these are……nice, but I’m not going to say it ranks up there with some of the better ones around town. The filling was moderate quantity wise in these without too much of the bits of pork fat you can sometimes get, though I can’t say it was too memorable either. Parts of the bun were a little dense and the dough kind of sticky. Not terrible by any means but not something to make me say “oooo, great pork bun.” More like, “oh, that’s just a pork bun.”

Hey look! It’s a vegetable! Something else I can’t resist is some sautéed green beans, plus I feel like I need something green with my food every now and then. While you could smell the garlic on these when I took the lid off, it was not really all that overwhelming when you taste them. Thus they probably could have kicked it up a bit. While these were cooked well and still had a bit of crunch in them, despite the wrinkles you see, they were a tad on the oily side. But overall, a decent side to offset all the dumplings.

Yes, this was a bunch of food and I was able to get about 3 1/2 meals out of it and the prices, for an upscale-ish dim sum spot are not too bad when compared to other similar SF spots. Which makes it a good thing for those flying solo like myself. Overall, even with the few hems and haws here and there, I like what Dumpling Time has to offer, which, when you peruse their menu, is a lot. I think if you are looking for some tasty dim sum for one, two, three (depending on your COVID bubble) and don’t want to interact with (hopefully) masked peeps, they are really good option for dine in at home so you don’t have to interrupt your binge watching. Puhleeze! We are all still doing it as we plum the deep deep depths of all the streaming services for anything we haven’t already seen.