We ventured out to Richmond and made our way to the restaurant. There are a couple of things that I like about this restaurant: 1) The decor and 2) Open kitchen. The decor is modern and well placed. You don't feel crowded when sitting at your table like in most Asian restaurants. With the open kitchen, you can see all the food being made and you know what's coming out of the kitchen.
The restaurant was surprisingly busy for a Monday night! But we were seated quickly and the menus were handed to us. I noticed that the menus were English friendly, being that all items were translated in English. I've been to Shanghai places before where the menus were partially translated. On the Dinesty menus, there are pictures and also a letter/numbering system for each dish which makes ordering easy if you do not speak the language. After debating on which dishes to order, we decided to order 7 small dishes: xiao long bao, vegetable dumplings, shiitake mushrooms wrapped in bean curd, beef and green onion pancake, radish cakes, wine chicken (or drunken chicken), and cucumber with garlic. About 5 minutes after placing our order, the first dish came out which was the xiao long baos.
Xiao Long Bao
The xiao long bao came out hot and exactly like how the dumplings are supposed to be: thin skinned and soupy. The one thing that I didn't quite like was that it tasted a bit greasy.
