With some friends up from Calgary who were hankering for some authentic style Chinese food, we headed to this little hole in the wall on Stony Plain Road. Its a little spot with old school laminated picture signage and family run - as evidenced by some of the kids doing homework at empty tables during the slow times. If you have friends that speak Mandarin, you're set - if not, you can randomly pick items off the menu. We did a combination of both since our friends spoke Mandarin fluently, while me and my boyfriend did not... other than "Xie Xie" for thank-you. Everything was served family style - everything is made as the chef feels like it and served on a single platter for everyone to share at the table. Now onto the fooood!
We first started out with vegetables... Stir fried green beans in garlic and dried shrimp. They turned out a bit on the overcooked side, but still savoury, garlicy and salty goodness
Next up was the Lamb pan seared dumplings. As these dumplings are made in the more Northern China style, the dough is thicker and dumpling waaay bigger than the typical style of dumplings we see mainly in the city. The lamb filling was quite gamey despite the herbs used to season it
Our third randomly selected dish was the Spicy stir fried eggplant and vegetables. Eggplant, onions, red and green bell peppers are tossed in a glaze with a good kick of heat from chilies
The fourth dish was a winner. Simply called Meat green onion rolls. A cross between green onion cakes, roti rolls along with seasoned well done thinly sliced beef
This was a favourite of the night - soft tender crisp pastry is spread with a sweet hoisin like sauce and rolled up with thinly sliced beef and green onions. NOM!
More dumplings! this time they were Steamed pork dumplings. Again, with its traditional dough thicker than most, it hides a little savoury ball of pork meatball inside. A shame some of them exploded during the steaming process.
Can't go to a Northern style Chinese restaurant without sampling their version of spicy fish soup! Their Fish fillets in spicy chill soup is similar to the one at Old Szechwan, this version was missing the grilled ginger root, but was loaded up instead with peppercorns, garlic, onions, fish fillets, enokki mushrooms and loads of citrusy and spicy Szechwan chills.
The waitress kindly skimmed off most of the fiery Szechwan chili peppers that give this dish its characteristic aroma and heat - off to the side for those brave/insane enough to eat them with their meal
the DESSERTS
This dessert our friend zeroed in on as soon as he saw it on the menu: Deep fried yam candy. Chunks of sweet yam are deep fried and while still molten hot, are tossed in a caramel sugar coat...
So folks can quickly dunk into an ice bath to harden the sugar shell while the sweet deep fried yam is still hot. Just don't wait too long or the sugar coating hardens on the plate, and you get one giant piece of cold yam candy. Hot sweet crunchy-smooshy goodness!
the VERDICTOverall, a good place to go for some authentic Northern style Chinese food. I'll be back for those tasty meat green onion rolls and the fried yam candy dessert! Don't expect Cantonese, Southern or Westernized Chinese food... its Northern only (which isn't everyone's cup of tea), or you'll be disappointed.
Chinese Dumpling Noodle House, Edmonton, AB
Address 15525 Stony Plain Rd NW, Edmonton, AB T5P3Z3
Phone (780) 486-1136
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