United Dumplings - Rockridge — Restaurant in Oakland

TLDR: we wanted to like it but we had a pretty bad experience. Service was pretty good and cheery but the food failed hard. Considering some other positive reviews, I hope it was just a bad day but also won't be paying the premium to eat asian fusion food that misses the mark.

📝 My girlfriend is Cantonese and we do dim sum / eat at some Chinese restaurant with her family a few times every month. All that just to give context for our palates and experience with Chinese/Asian flavors.

I'll start with the worst item first: 2/10 for the "shrimp toast". And i use quotes because while I appreciate creativity this execution barely had any visible shrimp or flavor AND that's even after we dusted off the heavy dousing of powdered sugar. Plain weird (tasted just like an oily, sugary donut) and was downright inedible. Please spare yourself and don't order this.

5/10 for the beef noodle soup. Handful of pieces of meat and half of them were fat and tendon. And that would've been excusable if the broth weren't absolutely lacking flavor (salt or acid). Merely tasted of beef broth and chili oil. Also, serve the chilli oil on the side and don't assume everyone wants it. Unless ofc it's just there to mask the lack of basic seasoning. Easily the worst version I've had and in that moment just made me appreciate all the other Taiwanese/other beef noodle soup spots I've been to.

6.5/10 for the pork pot stickers. And that might be a tad bit generous since it was the least worst thing. What my photo doesn't show is how the filling was really lacking seasoning/flavor (salt or acid). And that's weird because I often find that I like a lot less salt than most others do. 🤷🏻

We made sure to let the server know the above concerns and he proceeded to just give us some feedback forms. We left a good tip. That was it. Lol

🤔: Can't help but think that great service would have meant some sort of comp, and good service would have definitely warranted a courtesy apology or at least a follow up from the manager. I'd have to assume the broth and meat fillings are made in large batches. Decent quality control would involve tasting the broth and cooking some filling to taste that as well before proceeding to serve. And no, you cannot under season the filling expecting folks to drown it in soy sauce. It needs to be balanced by itself. High standards? Maybe but they feel appropriate for the prices, especially when you consider way better execution can be found at classic spots...

Ok it’s been a few months since my visit because I didn’t want to write it right away but I had a disappointing experience.

First, they were out of a few items I wanted. This was Saturday lunchtime. Specifically, all the mini pan-fried buns. He told us after seating and ordering. Bummer but ok. Then we ordered. I won’t go into the details.

He tells us up front they are short staffed in the kitchen and we MUST take our entire order at one time. Okaaay. Well that’s pretty normal I think. So we ordered 5 items. Keep in mind there are three of us so that’s a sizable order I think. And it’s not cheap here.

After 15 minutes one item comes. Ok no sweat, I’m sure it’ll all be out shortly. Nope. 15 minutes later we all what’s up and he says they are short staffed in the kitchen. He’ll check. He brings out second dish. Two dishes in 30 minutes. Still three to go.

Now I’m noticing other tables have been getting their food. And they ordered after us. I’m like, what? I ask the guy again to check. Takes him 8 more minutes to come back. In the meantime I see even more people get their food. Finally he’s back: “I’m sorry, there was an error in the order printing machine”. I’ll make your food now.

It’s 45 minutes since ordering and almost an hour since sitting. I’m like, no thanks we can’t wait longer, we’ll just pay for what we had. He rolls his eyes and said he has to try and back it out, or something like that, like I’m really inconveniencing him. Another 5 minutes for that.

Don’t like the way it happened. Don’t like the customer service or the attitude. My few months cooling off period didn’t help I guess.

I will say the food we did...

We came around 1:30pm on a Sunday. The whole experience was pretty bad.

Service: None of the servers seemed to like their jobs. They were just wandering and chatting around waiting for the lunch business hour to finish. They would bring the POS machine to the table for payment, which I personally feel uncomfortable and embarrassing, and prefer the old fashioned way (give them the credit card and sign on the receipt). I accidentally put the wrong button at the machine and only tipped 5 cents by mistake. Later I had to leave some cash on the table for the tips.

Food: -crab soup dumplings: very average quality. The wrap is sticking to the foil cup making it hard to lift without breaking it. Some of the frozen soup dumplings from grocery store taste even better than theirs. The crab meat stuffing doesn’t carry that savory umami flavor that it usually does, totally incomparable with the ones I had at Ding Tai Fung or Dumpling Home. -fresh cucumbers: the cucumber is very salty. -pot stickers: again, grocery store frozen food quality without savory flavors.

Vibes/environment: The interior design choices are just wrong. The space is pretty empty and the surface is reflecting a lot of noise and magnifying every little sound in the space. Creating the whole space full of harsh sounds from staff cleaning up table and dishes,...