Chef of Dumplings is one of the food vendors located inside the Aberdeen Centre Food Court in Richmond. Based on the earliest Yelp review posted, this food stall has been around for over three years now. While their name suggests that they specialize in handmade dumplings, their menu really has pre-made grocery store dumplings plus a whole lot of other things.
Disclosure: Some of the items in this review were complimentary.
Chef of Dumplings Menu
The popular offering at Chef of Dumplings is their 4 in 1 pancake combo. For $8.25, you get choice of pancake (roti canai, green onion pancake, or Chinese chive pancake), meat (calamari, beef, lamb, pork, or chicken), meat flavour (cumin, satay or Teriyaki), dumpling (Chinese chive and pork, white cabbage and pork, watercress and chicken, or vegetable), and an imitation Hong Kong Style Shark’s Fin Soup.
As for their dumplings, I believe that they are pre-bought, frozen, machine-made dumplings like the ones that you get at the grocery store. At places where they make their dumplings like Shanghai Dumpling House or Dinesty, you can see the person making them behind the counter. At Chef of Dumplings, I saw a girl at the counter on her cell phone.
Taste of Aberdeen
Last year, I had the pleasure of attending Taste of Aberdeen, a Chinesebites.com media extravaganza where 60 influencers indulged in 30 dishes by 20 Aberdeen Food Court vendors over 2.5 hours. It was there that I sampled Chef of Dumpling’s pan fried Chinese chives with pork dumplings. The skin was quite thick and tough suggesting that they are machine made. I liked how they weren’t overfried and that they weren’t super greasy.
4 in 1 pancake combo
I revisited Chef of Dumplings recently to round out my this review. For the $8.25 combo, I went with a green onion pancake, cumin-flavoured lamb, white cabbage and pork dumpling, and imitation shark fin soup. For the price, I would say that the combo was decent and filling. The food wasn’t all that bad either and even surprised me at how tasty it was for Chinese fast food. The green onion pancake was quite crispy, not burnt and not too greasy. The stir-fried lamb could have used more cumin flavour but the texture was nice and tender.
The dumplings were boiled – not much to highlight here.
However, I was really surprised by how tasting the imitation shark fin soup was. A popular Hong Kong snack, I have never ordered this at a restaurant in Metro Vancouver. It’s a shark-friendly, vegetarian soup with dried black fungus. The soup perhaps had some MSG and was kinda good. I wouldn’t mind having it again.
Overall Impression of Chef of Dumplings
Chef of Dumplings is a bit of a misnomer for place that serves machine-made pre-bought dumplings. However, I found the 4-in-1 combo priced at $8.25 to be pretty tasty and filling. Rating: 3/5