I Shanghai Delight is known to be one of the best spots for soup dumplings in Sacramento so we decided to give them a try.
I Shanghai Delight is located in Old Sacramento across the Waterfront Wheel.
The restaurant is sort of hidden because you need to take a short flight of stairs down. The design of the restaurant looks like it was the location of a pub or tavern at some point previously.
The atmosphere seemed a bit cold rather than an inviting and comfortable Chinese restaurant.
On the menu are appetizers (like sliced beancurd and chopped cucumber with garlic sauce); soup (like fried tofu soup with vermicelli and minced beef soup); noodle dishes (like spicy meat noodle soup and braised beef noodle soup); dumplings (like pork and glutinous rice); seafood (like sautéed shelled shrimp and fried shrimp); fried rice (like Yangzhou style and seafood) and more.
We got the following:
- Pork Dumplings
- Crab Roe Pork Dumplings
- Braised Beef Noodle Soup
- Pan Fried Pork Dumplings
- Braised Greens with Black Mushrooms
- Meat Ball with Crab Roe and Slated
- Sweet Osmanthus Scented Glutinous Rice Cake
The Pork Soup Dumplings were probably the only dish that would be worth getting. Nice broth and soft dumpling skin. These look to be handmade because the folding of the wrapper vary a bit between each dumpling.
The other items were just OK except for the Braised Beef Noodle Soup which was particularly bad. The beef was very tough and practically inedible. I told the server about it but she didn’t seem to really care. There was no attempt to take it off the bill or offer a substitute dish.
The pan fried dumplings had a nice crispy bottom and a rich, meaty filling.
The Crab Roe Pork Dumplings had too strong of a crab taste.
The Meat Ball with Crab Roe and Salted Egg Yolk seemed interesting but I don’t think I liked the flavours rich and creamy salted egg yolk with pork meat and crab meat together.
Service was slow and not particularly friendly nor good.
Perhaps getting some pork soup dumplings would be OK for takeout from this place. Otherwise, I wouldn’t really recommend a dine-in experience there.