Dough Zone Dumpling House Portland — Restaurant in Portland

We went to the Beaverton branch of this restaurant over the last weekend. I am posting my review at the Portland branch as well since this is a chain restaurant and food menu is common. Our experience regarding the vegetarian food would apply to the Portland branch as well and I think it is fair that customers know what food they are eating at this chain restaurant.

Here is my review below that I've put for the Beaverton location -

We went to this restaurant on a weekend for an evening dinner and had a horrendous experience. We have been here before, and it seems the restaurant hasn’t been completely honest with its customers in the past. I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS PLACE FOR ANYONE LOOKING FOR A VEGETARIAN DIET. Here are some details about our experience. My wife is a vegetarian, and she ordered her usual vegetable potstickers and steamed vegetable dumplings. We got our order of the vegetable potstickers first and as soon as she took the first bite and looked at the filling, she realized that this was likely not vegetables. I and the other folks in our group ate meat and we confirmed that the vegetable potstickers were chicken potstickers instead. We brought this to the attention of our server, and she promptly jumped into action. She apologized as this was likely a mistake in the kitchen. We understand that errors like this happen, and she agreed to send in another order of the vegetable potstickers ASAP. The real shock and the reason for my 1-start review was when she told us during our conversation that even the VEGETABLE POTSTICKERS AND VEGETABLE DUMPLINGS CONTAIN CHICKEN POWDER and hence are truly not vegetarian friendly. When we pointed out that the ridiculousness of this, she pointed me to the part of the menu which was not written in English and asked me to read it more carefully as it was not marked as V (for vegetarian). Having been to this restaurant before, we knew that veggie potstickers and veggie dumplings used to be marked as vegetarian in the past and that is why my wife ordered her go-to items in an already vegetarian-unfriendly menu. Our waitress then mentioned that a few months ago, dough zone realized that they had been using chicken powder in items on their menu marked as vegetarian. FYI, you can look at menu photos from 2023 uploaded on google maps and can see vegetarian steamed dumplings and veggie potstickers marked as vegetarian. They recently changed their menu to be “more transparent” to their customers. Although, the new menu is hopefully more accurate, I think it is extremely concerning behavior from the restaurant and shows their dishonesty towards their customers. FOR I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG, THE RESTAURANT HAS BEEN FEEDING CHICKEN-POWDER INFUSED FOOD IN THEIR MENU ITEMS MARKED VEGETARIAN. This is sickening and quite frankly probably illegal. I hope my review helps folks looking for truly vegetarian food options. Do not go to dough zone, there is no way of telling if they put chicken powder in their milk tea (Afterall, it’s not marked as a V). For anyone looking for a cuisine like that served in this restaurant, I would recommend going to Ding Tai Fung instead. It has more vegetarian options and is not dishonest to...

Possibly the worst dining experience I have ever had. The location is stunning, the views are nice, and the food is as good as any other 5 Dough Zone locations I have tried but the service was horrendous. We were a table of 4 and were sat fairly quickly, but from there everything went downhill. For starters, it took 15 minutes for our server - Aileen - to even greet us and get our drink order. She brought those back (4 waters and a wine) and left without even asking if we were ready to order... we had already filled out our paper and everything. We waited another TWENTY minutes before we flagged her down and asked to put in our food order. Food starts coming out fine, until we start getting the wrong items. The food runner brought out what was supposed to be vegetarian dumplings (2 of our guests were pescatarians for health reasons) and instead we received some sort of beef dumpling... which we didnt notice until biting into it since it all looks the same on the outside. That wouldnt have been a huge deal except it took us asking THREE different staff members across 30 minutes for help getting our vegetarian stuff. Its now been over an hour since we ordered and we still dont even have all of our items. Not only that but with 5 or so employees walking around we sat with all of our glasses empty. We had to ask for a refill of the water, twice. After another 15 minutes we finally get the vegetarian items and again arent offered any refill on our waters or if we need anything, they just dropped off the food and walked away. We sat for another 35 minutes waiting for our check before asking a random staff member if we could check out. What should have been a nice 1 hour meal turned into 3 hours, not by choice. Even after paying Aileen never came back to check on us, tell us have a good night, or anything of the sort. She checked on us ONCE in a 3 hour service which again, shouldnt have taken more than an hour. Even beyond Aileen's horrid service, none of the staff seemed to want to assist either. We sat with empty dishes on the cramped table for long periods of time, we were never offered refills and had to ask repeatedly for one, we had to ask 3 different people about the vegetarian dumplings because no one would get it fixed; it was like dining in a restaurant with all new staff who have no clue what they are doing! (Honorable mention to the nice woman who seated us (i think she was the hostess? she was polishing silverware. She answered our questions about the vegetarian options and gave us lots of good info.) I've been to 5 other locations between OR and WA and I have never had a bad experience until now so I dont know if this location just sucks or what happened there... The food was fine overall minus the switched baskets with the wrong items. We got our salad and cucumber appetizers last which was weird but not a big deal. Overall it was easily the worst service I have...

It is very apparent that this location is still figuring things out, but the number of mistakes that were made during my visit with a colleague is extremely disappointing for a well-established chain, even if this specific location is new. My first attempt at visiting I gave up on after waiting 15 minutes just to get on the waiting list only to find the wait was over an hour - and only after downloading the Yelp app to view where I was in line.

For this particular visit (5/6/2022), I checked in ahead of time on the Yelp app right as the location opened. My party was seated right away on arrival and received one ordering slip for the entire party and a menu that was incredibly beat up for a location not even open a month. I suspect menus were brought down from Seattle to save money. Our order was taken fairly quickly, but things when quickly downhill from there.

Apparently, the front desk never actually checked my party in from the waitlist, causing multiple texts and calls from Yelp until I went up to the front desk and asked for them to fix it.

Our food started to show up in a reasonable amount of time, but the wrong order was initially brought. We we did get items they were actually ours, we were told our table had been entered in with the wrong number.

Not once did we get checked on by the same member of staff. I appreciate being checked on, but I suspect all of the mistakes that were made because of the constant rotation of staff. At one point, a duplicate item came out because the kitchen made more than one in error.

Checkout was relatively quick as thankfully this location uses a Toast system that allows it to be done immediately at the table. We did have to ask twice for a to-go box though.

Despite the teething issues that are immediately apparent at this location, the quality of the food is quite good for the price.

In short, worth a visit, but give it at least a month to find...