New Year’s Eve Lunch

I rounded up a group of foodies for NYE lunch at Dumpling House Restaurant. Joining me for this lunch were the girls from UncouthGourmand, AK from I’m Not Lawfing and others.

We arrived around 12:30 and didn’t leave until well after 3 p.m. Why? Because we ate. And ate. And ate some more.

Here’s our chaotic table.

There were six of us and we ordered six orders of dumplings, a lunch special, beef noodle soup, seafood mandarin noodles and fried chicken. Oh, and dessert.

I thought all the dumplings were pretty good though I seemed to recall the pork ones being bigger before. The fish were my favorite this time around. I do have to say they should have a spicier chili paste as it hardly did anything but color my vinegar and soy concoction reddish brown.

For about $6, the lunch special had a list of choices and came with soup and a few other thingamabobs but I preferred the dumplings.

Thought we asked for spicy, it wasn’t overly so. I loved the fresh spinach in this and the super long noodles. How long you say? Josie, the UG girl demonstrates.

Wow! Go handmade noodles! I loved how long they were but it wasn’t easy to serve. So we got scissors.

Fun! Watching Josie was probably more fun than eating those noodles. Oh wait, I’m a noodles whore….no, Josie is more fun than non-spicy spicy noodles!

I had heard so much about the Mandarin noodles I wanted to order them. Unfortunately, the seafood ones were just okay.

We were more excited about the onion pancake and the fried chicken the UGs ordered.

Our stomachs were screaming but we needed to get their dessert dumplings. The Dumpling House offered four types and we chose banana. I had read you’re supposed to dunk them in ice water which we asked for.

Expecting the water bath would cool the dumpling, AK put one in her mouth and motioned don’t follow suit. Apparently it was still burning hot.

What the water did was harden the outer shell creating a nice crispy shell.

What an excellent meal to close out 2009!

Read about the lunch with the UncouthGourmands here!