Tao Asian Kitchen
3-280 Elgin St., 613-695-1300, taoasiankitchen.ca
Open: Monday to Friday 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday noon to 10 p.m., Sunday 12:30 to 10 p.m.
Prices: Three dumplings for $4.95, other dishes up to $14.95.
Access: No steps to front door or washrooms
Dumpling Bowl
730 Somerset St. W., 613-845-0880, dumplingbowl.com
Open: Monday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday to Sunday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Prices: 15 dumplings for up to $9.99, other dishes up to $9.99
Access: A few steps to front door
When it comes to cheap but well-crafted eats, Ottawa is all about burgers, tacos and maybe the occasional macaron. But foodies might want to take stock of some recent developments when it comes to Chinese dumplings.
First, there’s what seems to me to be the long-overdue arrival in town of some quite good soup dumplings. Originally from Shanghai, they’re steamed, porky buns with a difference. A bit bigger than bite-sized, soup dumplings are filled not just with savoury forcemeat but also some gelatinized broth. When the dumplings are cooked, the broth liquefies. When eaten, the dumpling delivers a initial slurp of delicious soup for the genteel eater, or an extra juicy mouthful for the more ravenous.
The previous time I tried soup dumplings in Ottawa, they were nothing to get excited about — casually made, not that tasty and worse, maybe even leaky.
Happily, Tao Asian Kitchen, which opened in October on Elgin Street, appears to be the place to go for soup dumplings. The owners of Tao also opened Ottawa’s two Ginza ramen restaurants this year, and for now they’re threatening to corner the market on bringing trendier Asian dishes to a wider audience.
Tao, a sleek 20-seater, decorated notably with a TV tuned to Food Network Canada, is pretty pan-Asian. It serves mango salad (mundane and proteinless, $6.95), OK salad rolls (two for $5.50) and meal-sized soups ($10.95 and $11.95), including reasonable beef- and chicken-based pho and won ton soups, although the latter, broth-wise, garnish-wise and noodle-wise, skews more Vietnamese than Chinese.
Mango salad at Tao Asian Kitchen.
Wonton soup with shrimp at Tao Asian Kitchen
It stands out, though, because of its dim sum items, which are made, or at least finished, à la carte rather than wheeled around on carts. Of the 10 or so dumpling-based dishes, the soup dumplings (also known as xiao long bao, three for $4.95) were the rushed-from-the-kitchen standouts, with good meatiness and soupiness going for them, plus the requisite red vinegar for dipping. The dumplings’ skins were a little thick, but on the other hand, they didn’t leak. Plus, we were told that if they had leaked, we would have received free replacements.
From left: soup dumplings, shrimp and mushroom dumplings, spinach dumplings at Tao Asian Kitchen
Shrimp and sticky rice dumplings at Tao Asian Kitchen
Also served at Tao are pan-fried pork soup dumplings (sheng jian bao, three for $4.95), which are more oblong and less sack-shaped, and are thicker-skinned so as to accommodate some crisping. They’re larger and more unwieldy to eat, but that’s the trade-off for a bit of crispness.
Pan-fried pork soup dumplings at Tao Asian Kitchen
The shrimp dumplings (three for $4.95) were a little lacking in terms of their wrappers but good filling-wise, with chunks of toothsome shrimp.
All of the dim sum items, I was told, were made by “a lady in Toronto.” Ideally, the dumplings would be made in-house. Still, Tao’s imports surpassed the leak-prone soup dumplings that I had this summer in Richmond, B.C.
Meanwhile, on Somerset Street West, Dumpling Bowl has been open for some months. There, staff, which include women from the central Chinese megacity of Wuhan, serve freshly made dumplings filled with pork, beef, chicken or, for undaunted vegetarians, zucchini, black fungus and mung bean noodles.
Beyond its namesakes, this even more spartan and inexpensive 30-seater serves a few smaller items (to name one, kid-friendly nuggets of “salted, crunchy fried chicken,” $4.99) and some meal-sized bowls.
Salted crunchy fried chicken at Dumpling Bowl
Of the latter, wonton soup ($7.99) was nothing more than some ungarnished, wan broth and a sizable portion of thin-skinned, tasty pork-and-shrimp wontons.
Wonton soup at Dumpling Bowl
Extremely simple “noodles with minced meat and Beijing-style sauce” (also known as zhajiangmian, $9.99) united thick wheat noodles with batons of cucumber and intensely salted meat, which tasted more of soy sauce than the preferable soybean paste.
Noodles with minced meat with Beijing style sauce at Dumpling Bowl
But while these dishes don’t exactly draw me back, Dumpling Bowl’s dumplings definitely appeal. First of all, they are a steal, priced at 10 for no more than $7.49 or $15 for $9.99. (That’s for boiled dumplings. Paying an extra $1.50 for a bit of pan-frying and dipping sauce is worth it.) Available frozen for take-out, they are cheaper still, as in 30 dumplings for $14.50.
I’ve tried beef-and-coriander dumplings and pork-chive-and-shrimp dumplings, and both hit the spot, 10 at a time. They were served piping hot, and were meaty and well-seasoned. Each of the latter had a good morsel of shrimp inside. While these were not literally soup dumplings, they still packed little explosions of juice.
Pan-fried pork, chive and shrimp dumplings at Dumpling Bowl
There have been little shortcomings at both Tao and Dumpling Bowl. Once, at lunch, Tao was out of its lemongrass pork chop, its short ribs, and, worst of all, red vinegar. Dumpling Bowl’s front area was chilly last week. Neither serves much in the way of dessert. Neither has a liquor license, although Tao is applying.
But from my two visits to each unassuming eatery, it’s clear that both take dumplings seriously and can satisfy those homey, if not haute, cravings.
phum@ottawacitizen.com
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