My favorite restaurant in the 626 area - the xiao long bao's are amazing!

I guess this restaurant doesn't have any noodle soup except for wonton noodle soup, so we were a bit disappointed. They do have more Asian dishes though. We ordered the crispy onion pancake again, xiao long bao, Shanghai style chow mein, the pan fried meat buns, and an order of the pork dumplings.

Food came out quickly and I was very happily surprised that this location of Mama Lu's had better and bigger XLB than the other location, like fellow Yelper John mentioned. It was juicier and even more flavorful! I also thought the onion pancake was better here than the other location. It was a lot thicker and had more substance and taste. We forwent the potstickers/fried dumplings as the ones from the other Mama Lu's wasn't good.

The dumplings were really good, too. There were only 8, but incredibly juicy. Mama Lu's really knows their stuff on dumplings and XLB. I'm not a fan of dumplings in general, but I really enjoyed the pork ones. The pan fried meat buns were okay, but too oily for me. Not enough bread in my opinion and I have had better. The Shanghai style chow mein was also good, but different than the other ones I have had. The noodles were more dry tasting and there were lots of other ingredients (mushroom, cabbage, onions, etc) that my picky sister did not enjoy. It wasn't too bad, though.

And because this place is newer, it is more clean with a brighter atmosphere than the other location. I wasn't a fan of the chairs though. I couldn't get comfortable and kept trying to pull it up, but because it was more heavy and more of a bench, it didn't really move anywhere. We didn't visit this location at first because we had heard it was more expensive than the old location, but we found that it wasn't true (or if it was, it was just by a few cents).

I am a big fan of this place's XLB and green onion pancake! And definitely try the dumplings!