Steam Boys — Restaurant in Madison

Food: The food was sub par. There were definitely some highlights, but it was still a tad pricey. The menus seemed to have been brought over from Nashville rather than reprinted for Madison.

Hot Dumpling Bowl (4/5): The chili oil/crunch had a good amount of spice. There was enough to toss every steamed dumpling with the oil.

5 Spice Popcorn Chicken (4/5): Definitely one of our favorites and paired really well with the sauce.

Soup Dumplings (1.5/5): Lackluster. Very disappointed in these. They fell apart and had barely any liquid in them. The taste wasn't that great either.

Pan Seared Bao (3/5): There was basically a meatball at the center of the Bao. Whenever I ended up getting to the meat, it just fell straight out of the Bao. Good flavor on the meat though.

Beef Noodle Soup: My friend rated this a 3/5. He mentioned the noodles were like spaghetti and not the right texture. He enjoyed the beef and broth.

Steamed Bao: My friend seemed to enjoy this more than the pan seared Bao. The meat stuck to the Bao better. It was basically a giant meatball also.

Service and Ambiance: The restaurant was packed when I entered. My group was fortunate to get a table. It took us about 20 minutes to get food, which was fairly quick for everything we ordered and how busy it was.

Not sure if I'll go again based on my experience apart from AYCE Dumplings...

Went very excited to try dumplings in Huntsville and came out sadly disappointed. Our party of 3 ordered soup dumplings, chicken and pork fried baos, pan friend pork dumplings, the friend chicken bites and the hot dumpling bowl with shrimp and pork dumplings. The food seemed a little bit more expensive for dumplings but as mentioned we were so happy to eat fresh dumplings with the colder weather. Let’s start with the bad, the baos were greasy and a meatball for filling that was clearly too small for the dough. The popcorn chicken has frozen friend vibes and you could get better from Publix. The hot dumpling bowl was smothered in this very vinagry sauce. If that’s your jam then you’ll like them, 2/3 people didn’t. As for the good! The pan fried dumplings were maybe a 7/10 in taste. The oil dripping from the dumplings was not savory and killed the experience a bit but the taste made up for it. Finally the soup dumplings, the broth was ok but the wrapper and filling tasted similarly to Trader Joe’s frozen dumplings. It sucks that all 3 of us left unhappy and with small stomachaches. I want them to improve for sure but that might take time. Will consider coming back...

We have eaten there a number of times. I thought the food and service were great. The Zha Jiang noodles are EXCELLENT. Beef Noodle Soup is good too. Some people I noticed compared the noodle soup to Japanese ramen, but this is more of a Chinese noodle soup and definitely taste different that traditional Japanese ramen.

We also enjoyed the pork and pan seared dumplings, which we thought were excellent. The Vietnamese coffee was strong and sweet, which I enjoyed very much. You can opt for a less sweet version.

I did notice that one review dubiously mentioned that they were stabbed by a boba straw for nearly 20 minutes by staff members or something like that. However, I would like to happily say that we did not experience a boba stabbing and maybe that was more of a fantastical exaggeration instead of an actual event. However, if steam boys were to sponsor a boba straw stabbing match event, I would surely attend and maybe even participate.

We...