South Bay: My Dumpling
For Bitter Night this year (our version of Valentine's Day for those of you who don't know), the girls and I were feeling nostalgic about Indonesia and came up with the brilliant idea of recreating lemper for ourselves.
If you've never heard of lemper before, you need to rectify that now. I'm serious. Click here and scroll down.
Anyway, our decision to make lemper from scratch led to a multi-grocery store quest to find all the ingredients. We made a pit stop at My Dumpling for dinner:
It was pretty quiet inside:
The four of us ordered up a storm. Nothing unusual there. We were given a laminated menu and a white board marker and off we went:
We got the green onion pancake ($2.95):
Personally, I like my green onion pancake on the thicker side. I've been spoiled by my father's homemade ones. My Dumpling did have a thick green onion pancake option. Should have ordered that instead.
Of course we hard to order dumplings at a place called My Dumpling:
It wasn't bad. It also wasn't great either. Just rather unmemorable all around.
Same with the pot stickers ($6.95):
Some things just taste better made at home.
I always want to order won ton with hot chili oil when I see it on the menu ($4.95):
Again, good, but not exactly mind-blowing.
We should have stopped there, but of course we didn't. The Shanghai fried fat noodles were overkill ($6.95):
We were all too full by then to really enjoy the noodles. I only remember it being rather salty.
My Dumpling is the place to go for a quick bite to eat before or after grocery shopping at Ranch 99. The food is good, the prices reasonable. (Just make sure to bring cash.) However, I wouldn't go out of my way to eat there.
In the end, we managed to gather all the essential ingredients. To accomplish that, we had to make a late night trip to T's friend's house to raid her tree. Sending T down to get the kaffir lime leaves while three of us stayed in an idling van wasn't shady at all.
We combined two recipes (picking and choosing what ingredients/steps we felt seemed right) and miracle of miracles, our lemper actually came out pretty decent. Of course, they were nowhere as good as what we had in Indonesia, but hey, not too shabby, if we do say so ourselves.
My Dumpling
300 Barber Ct
Milpitas, CA 95035
(408) 955-9988
If you've never heard of lemper before, you need to rectify that now. I'm serious. Click here and scroll down.
Anyway, our decision to make lemper from scratch led to a multi-grocery store quest to find all the ingredients. We made a pit stop at My Dumpling for dinner:
It was pretty quiet inside:
The four of us ordered up a storm. Nothing unusual there. We were given a laminated menu and a white board marker and off we went:
We got the green onion pancake ($2.95):
Personally, I like my green onion pancake on the thicker side. I've been spoiled by my father's homemade ones. My Dumpling did have a thick green onion pancake option. Should have ordered that instead.
Of course we hard to order dumplings at a place called My Dumpling:
We ordered the pork one ($6.95 for eight):
It wasn't bad. It also wasn't great either. Just rather unmemorable all around.
Same with the pot stickers ($6.95):
Some things just taste better made at home.
I always want to order won ton with hot chili oil when I see it on the menu ($4.95):
Again, good, but not exactly mind-blowing.
We should have stopped there, but of course we didn't. The Shanghai fried fat noodles were overkill ($6.95):
We were all too full by then to really enjoy the noodles. I only remember it being rather salty.
My Dumpling is the place to go for a quick bite to eat before or after grocery shopping at Ranch 99. The food is good, the prices reasonable. (Just make sure to bring cash.) However, I wouldn't go out of my way to eat there.
In the end, we managed to gather all the essential ingredients. To accomplish that, we had to make a late night trip to T's friend's house to raid her tree. Sending T down to get the kaffir lime leaves while three of us stayed in an idling van wasn't shady at all.
We combined two recipes (picking and choosing what ingredients/steps we felt seemed right) and miracle of miracles, our lemper actually came out pretty decent. Of course, they were nowhere as good as what we had in Indonesia, but hey, not too shabby, if we do say so ourselves.
My Dumpling
300 Barber Ct
Milpitas, CA 95035
(408) 955-9988
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