Review of Dumpling House in Cambridge, MA

I had a wonderful meal this afternoon.

We were up in Boston celebrating a friend’s birthday. This was the next day, and we were all a bit fuzzy as a result of the excesses of the previous night. Although I deeply desired it to be, this was not the first meal of the day. We had eaten breakfast at a decent but unremarkable diner.

After a lazy afternoon of watching the soccer games and listlessly consuming Instagram reels, we descended upon Dumpling House in Cambridge. I had eaten here once before and it was great. However, there was a brief event during this visit that came to dominate my memory of the place: a plate of fried rice that floated past us en route to another table. It absorbed me: it was exactly the ideal of fried rice I had in my head. It was a heaping plate of fluffy rice, with all the random bits and bobs that a fried rice should have, and, most notably, large pieces of what I thought were cabbage, which I had never seen before in a fried rice. For some reason I could also just tell it was absolutely laden with MSG. I was furious that I hadn’t had the sense to order it. It inspired a good amount of fried rice lunches in the rest of that summer, two pictured below.

A year and a half later, I finally got the chance to revisit the restaurant and amend my mistake. I was determined to make no errors in my ordering. It was a brisk day, so the first item we ordered was a vat of beef mince soup. It was well executed, like every beef mince soup I have had. A side of chili oil to liven things up is mandatory. It was just what the doctor ordered: I find the slightly thick quality some Chinese soups have to be super comforting, on such brisk days there is nothing better.

The other items took a bit more deliberation. As a consequence of the setting described above, we had our minds set on intense flavors: I wanted to get my ass kicked with spice, and I wanted to be punched in the face with MSG. We settled on spicy salt and pepper pork, of course the fried rice, and at the last second switched from my typical garlic bok choy/spinach to sauteed cabbage with chili. The spicy salt and pepper pork was perfect. It was crispy chunks of fatty, tender pork and sliced peppers that were coated in a spicy, salty, and super umami (read: MSG) mix. The cabbage was also great, braised cabbage is so goated. This also was served in a somewhat spicy and intensely umami sauce.

We also ordered a hot tea that was a perfect accompaniment to the food. It had such nice tea flavor. It is always remarkable to me how Chinese teas taste so incredible with nothing added to them, as my friend Zach says “just the leaves.”

Last, but certainly not least, we had the fried rice. This lived up every bit to my expectation. It was powerfully umami. It had pieces of pork, shrimp, and a bunch of other stuff I am forgetting. Something that intrigued me was what I thought was cabbage actually turned out to be iceburg lettuce. To Western palates this may seen odd, but cooked lettuce is fantastic. The fragile quality of the lettuce lent to a tender feeling. The only way to understand this is to try it, but super fluffy rice in combination with the lettuce made the fried rice seem tender. I don’t know a better word to describe it. I have never been able to achieve this feeling with the fried rices I make at home, and there are no other fried rices I can remember off the top of my head having it.

Needless to say, we devoured everything. Fantastic. It was all fantastic. I walked out of the restaurant in a state of well-being that one can only obtain via a really great meal.