Dumpling House Restaurant Spadina w. Dumplings, Hot & Sour Soup and Spicy Seaweed Salad

Fried Dumplings at Dumpling House

One of my favourite things to eat is a plate of hot Chinese style dumplings. We frequently make them at home fried or steamed (admittedly we use store bought)  served with noodles, greens, and spoonfuls of Lao Gan Ma based home blended dipping sauces!

A great place to go for dumplings in downtown Toronto is the appropriately named Dumpling House on Spadina Ave. a couple blocks north of Dundas in the heart of Chinatown and just beside the Kensington Market district.

Steamed Dumplings at Dumpling House

Dumpling House has dumplings available both steamed and fried. While I prefer fried overall, which come with a terrific crunchy "webbing" connecting them, we generally also get a plate of steamed just for the contrast of texture.

There are the general assortment of fillings from pork to chicken, to lamb, beef and shrimp paired with mushroom, chive, egg, etc. All are delicious and made in-house. In fact, you can watch the kitchen staff at work in the front window preparing them.

I recommend (especially if it is your first time going) getting the assorted plate where you can try three different dumpling fillings. An assorted plate with 15 dumplings is a very reasonable $8.59. In fact, the prices overall at Dumpling House are a great deal.

While dumplings are certainly the main attraction there are also noddle dishes, rice and mains and a variety of soups and sides available.

The Spicy Seaweed Salad is a standout. It has a touch of heat and is very refreshing with seaweed, carrot and cilantro in a vinegar sauce. It is a steal at $4.99.

Spicy Seaweed Salad

The Hot & Sour Soup is also excellent, made slightly differently than many others, with a rich flavour based around tofu, egg and cilantro. A bowl is $3.99.

Hot & Sour Soup

Dumpling House is quite small relatively speaking and generally busy so you can expect a line and a wait at peak hours especially.

Service is very fast, however, so normally you do not have to wait too long! You should also note that the restaurant is cash only. It has no liquor licence.

While closed Tuesday, it is open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. every other day.

Dumpling House is located at 328 Spadina Ave. (416) 596-8898.

Making the dumplings!

Delicious! 

See also: Swatow's Hot Sauce, Nguyen Huong Banh Mi & Emma Goldman

See also: Swatow Restaurant -- Shrimp Dumpling Noodle Soup & more in the heart of Toronto

Swatow's Hot Sauce, Nguyen Huong Banh Mi & Emma Goldman

Travelling back the other day to one of my favorite downtown Toronto restaurants, Swatow, I was thrilled to discover that they are now selling their house hot sauce that I love to put heaping spoonfuls of into the Shrimp Dumpling Noodle Soup that I always order when I go there. It is available in jars for $5.


This is a terrific hot sauce -- it was seeking a substitute for it that actually led me to discover the excellent Lao Gan Ma line of hot sauces which I now regularly buy. Swatow's homemade one is very oily, flavorful and slightly smokey. It is also very hot!


Really perfect in a noodle soup or drizzled over a stir-fry. Pick some up next time you are in Chinatown.

Swatow's house hot sauce on a stir-fry I made at home.

Great Banh Mi below...a piece of history above!

With hot sauce in hand I then made my way, as I often do, to pick up some Banh Mi Vietnamese sandwiches from Nguyen Huong Food right across Spadina from Swatow. These are an incredible value at $2.50 for regular or $3.00 for large, and are served on a fresh french style bun filled up with freshly sliced vegetables, assorted sliced meats, a pate, sauce and, if you wish, gloriously hot sliced red peppers. If not having them right then and there (though there is no seating, so you have to find a bench or eat while strolling around) I take them home and they make a perfect late afternoon snack or lunch that or the next day. My kids like to take them for lunch at school.

The shop also carries a whole array of other quick take-out dishes, like assorted meat or shrimp rolls, ready-to-go lunches, buns, etc, all well made and tasty and all at very good prices.

There is another reason to make the trip to Nguyen Huong, however, and this one has an historic and leftist connection!

The shop is located below the apartment that the great Anarchist writer, activist and revolutionary Emma Goldman lived in in the years of 1926-1927.

The city of Toronto has erected a small plaque right in front of the store to acknowledge and commemorate this.

How cool is that!

Swatow is located at 309 Spadina Ave. & Nguyen Huong Food is located at 322 Spadina Ave. 

See also: Swatow Restaurant -- Shrimp Dumpling Noodle Soup & more in the heart of Toronto

See also: Lao Gan Ma Oil Chilli Sauce and steamed dumplings.

Lao Gan Ma Oil Chilli Sauce and steamed dumplings.

Ever since a girlfriend at the time introduced me to its Shrimp Dumpling Noodle soup in the early 1990's I have been a regular diner at Swatow's, a terrific and inexpensive Chinese restaurant in downtown Toronto. At each visit I will heap spoonfuls of an oily chili flake hot sauce that they have on their table into my soup to give it that extra kick and flavour that spicy sauces can bring.

 
Recently at a Chinese grocery and vegetable market I stumbled upon a jar of what, from outward appearances, I thought must be the sauce they use. As it was very inexpensive at $1.99 a jar (or 2 for $3.00), I took a chance and picked one up. Once I got it home and opened it, however, I found that I had accidentally bought a sauce of even greater complexity and intensity of heat and flavour, the Lao Gan Ma Oil Chilli Sauce with peanuts. I can hardly overstate how fortuitous an error this was as this has quickly become one of my very favourite hot sauces of any type.


 
The Oil Chilli Sauce is a part of a family of Lao Gan Ma sauces all developed by a woman born in a remote province of China to a poor family, who became a street vendor due to the premature death of her husband leaving her with no income, and who now presides over a remarkable sauce empire. Her really incredible story was told in an article on the Women of China website. 

The sauce itself really has it all. It has a satisfying texture, with its blend of oils, chilli flakes and the crunch of the peanuts. It is very spicy but its heat does not overwhelm the tastes of either the sauce itself or the foods you have it with. It is perfect with noodle dishes, dumplings and just about anything I have tried it with. 

For this blog I will show how I used it recently to enjoy with steamed pork dumplings. 

 
I got out our Bamboo Steamer and set it up atop a pot of boiling water. After placing a layer of romaine lettuce leaves at the bottom of the steamer I filled it with O'Tasty brand Pork and Black Mushroom and Pork and Leek Dumplings. 

While the dumplings were steaming I took several spoonfuls of the sauce and put it in a small bowl. I then added some Dark Soy Sauce and a bit of white vinegar and blended it all together. This blend is nicely hot, salty and tart with real kick in all three departments!


Once the dumplings are done, you can dip the dumplings freely for as much of the heat/saltiness you want. Simply put, wonderful stuff!
 



I found that this sauce-dumpling blend of flavours paired really well with an inexpensive Italian table wine that both my pocketbook and I are fond of, Fontana Di Papa Castelli Romani, which can be had in a 1.5 litre bottle for only $12.95 if you are in Ontario. The heaviness of this wine suits the boldness of the sauce and dumplings. 

 
The full Lao Gan Ma (which apparently is loosely translated as an affectionate form of saying grandmother) product line can be found on their website. I look forward to trying as many as I can find. Seek them out wherever you can. They are well worth the search.