Dough Zone Dumpling House Seattle International District — Restaurant in Seattle

I had been a fan and regular customer of dough zone ever since its early days. This was back in 2014 when it opened as a small hole on the wall in Bellevue.

Back then, all their dumplings, inviting the filling and skins, were hand made. Everything tasted amazing. This was the place I used to take my friends and family when I wanted to treat them to a special meal.

But over the years, I saw them make more and more compromises in quality as they gained in popularity. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad their business was doing so well, which is why I continued to be a regular there.

It saddens me to say that I am no longer a fan of dough zone. When our dishes arrived, I was surprised at how far they had fallen in terms of quality.

Here are my “before” and “after” comparisons for the dishes we ordered:

Q Bao (pan fried) before: medium sized, puffy, so savory and delicious. (Grade: A) after: still fairly tasty, but much smaller in size now. The dough was no longer puffy, and the texture of the meat had turned grainy. (Grade: B-)

Dan Dan noodles before: dough zone was never a noodle house, so these were always just “okay.” Portion was decent though! (Grade: C+) after: portion was reduced by roughly half of what we would have normally received, down to roughly a small palmful of noodles. (Grade: C-)

Chicken pot sticker before: crispy pan fried bottoms with a lazy dumpling skirt. Everything you would expect from some really solid pot stickers. (Grade: B+) after: these mostly held up in quality. Their dumpling skins were no longer as silky as they once were. The dumpling skirt was non-existent. (Grade: C)

Xiao Long Bao before: this used to be their bread and butter, and for good reason. They were perfect little mounds of joy. The skins were supple and thin, while the filling was made with higher quality ingredients. (Grade: A+) after: the dumplings looked like they had been sitting for a couple hours under a heat lamp. They came out luke warm. The skins were thick, mottled and pock-marked all over in irregular patterns (means they let a lot of water splash onto the skins, ruining the steaming process), and the pleats were coveted in a layer of crusty-white starch. Half of the dumplings had popped, losing their filling. (Grade: D)

Wonton soup before: silky, super thin skin, slightly chewy and translucent. Fillings were pretty standard, but the soup was hot and savory and full of umami. (Grade B) after: super thick, overcooked skin. The dumplings all had an unappealing gray cooler. The soup was pretty much as good as before though. Again, the whole dish was lukewarm. (Grade: D)

Chive dumplings (pan fried) before: an umami filling of egg, chive, glass noodles, wrapped in a crispy pan fried dumpling skin. This used to be one of my all time favorite dishes. (Grade: A+) after: dough zone’s compromises in ingredient quality was most evident in this dish. The egg was replaced with powdered egg, making the texture grainy yet slimy. Very unpleasant. The chives were indistinguishable as chives, as they had been pulverized into a nondescript mass of green vegetable. The chives flavor was lost. The filling overall ended up very watery, lacking all the charm of its former version. The skin on the outside remained largely the same taste, albeit far greasier. I could also taste that the thick layer of grease coating the outside was old. (Grade: F)

Broccoli w/seafood sauce before: standard green broccoli with a side of oyster sauce. (Grade B) after: the seafood sauce was replaced with a sugary corn syrup with a bit of oyster sauce mixed in. (Grade: F)

So disappointed in what Dough Zone has become. I unfortunately cannot recommend...

Honestly, one of the worst places I've been to in recent memory. If I can save even one person from eating here I will be happy as they don't deserve your hard earned money. The reviews are high but if you have never had soup dumplings or things of the like, this is a very bad example of what it can taste like.

First off, service was awful. The guy was rolling his eyes and yelling at us to get into the the table we were patiently waiting for after putting in our name to the wait list. The server never attended us aside to bring the food and even before we were done eating, with food on the plate, brought the machine to us prompting to pay as if to rush us out. There was a few open tables at the time too.

Food itself was just as bad. We had a few things: dan dan noodles, then beef pancake roll, then pork xiao long bao, and lastly the pan-fried pork buns. My god, the noodles, they have no flavor but spice and saltiness. It didn't show a single shred of what the dan dan part was supposed to be. Noodles were cooked nice and al dente though. 3/10 Beef Pancake Rolls were next and all I could taste was a salty burnt dry flavor. They didn't even include the sauce inside that once again makes what a beef roll what they are. Once again just super salty, for what reason?? 2/10 Xiao Long Bao, this is what is plastered on their marketing right? So it should be good right? I guess not. It came in a steamer and how was it not hot?? There was practically no soup inside and the "meat" was this small little gross low quality pebble. 1/10 Lastly, Pan Fried Bao. I swear this Bao is something they swiped up at the nearby market in the frozen isle and decided to microwave it. The bao itself on the outside just looks frozen and manufactured, it crumbled at the touch of my chopsticks and was scalding hot unlike the xiao long bao but there was almost no browning or panfried texture at the bottom. Abysmal I couldn't finish it. 0/10

Drinks? We got a Ube Milk Tea and Passion Fruit Green Tea. It's crazy that I was sitting at one of the tables near the end where I could see the prep area and I see the server pull out a bag out of the refrigerator and pour pre mixed I assume just powdered flavor milk into the cup. Tastes about as expected, just artificial sweet liquid. The passion fruit green tea was ok, just very sweet and fortunately I was just looking for a refreshing cold drink and it fit the bill.

I guess the atmosphere is nice? It looks like a modern fusion of happy hour after work eateries in the heart of international town of downtown seattle.

Looks like I cross referenced a picture of my bill and the menu they gave us. The prices what we paid on the transaction bill per item does NOT show the same amount as the price on the menu. So I guess they are just lying and charging more huh?

Any-who assuming anyone read this, I'm so disappointed I went here, and if you're just in the area wanting to check this out because it's something new and right in front...

We are from Vancouver Canada and just came here for a quick visit last week as it was a long weekend in Canada.

We saw this restaurant during an evening walk in Chinatown and I came here to check it out the next day.

It was Sunday afternoon it was not super busy, they also had lots of staff, but no one was helping at the reception area. I saw a machine and figured I could register myself. It asked for your name, phone number and if you preferred a table or high bar seating. I was in my early pregnancy so I preferred a table. While waiting for my table, I did see other people asking the manager for help, but he told them just to use the machine by themselves, so I guessed I did the right thing.

I got the urge to write this review because within a week of this visit, I just received a scam call from Seattle by a man speaking in Mandarin. Visiting this restaurant was the only time I shared my phone number in Seattle. The man asked me if I could hear him in Mandarin. Pretending I did not understand Mandarin, I replied in English and asked, "Who’s this?" and he replied in Mandarin if I could speak in Mandarin. I hanged up and he sent me a text to ask what happened. I hope someone will look into this if their system was hacked.

I also wanted to make a note that when it was my turn to have my table, the manager told me he did not have any table right now and asked me if I could sit at high bar instead. I believed he just did not bother to clean up the table for me as I was by myself. A couple of big groups of customers just left and hence two long tables were available. I understood my bump was not visible, so I didn’t want to express my need again and just compromised.

I ordered a Dan Dan noodle as I was not hungry and just wanted to checked out this place. Having eaten a lot of Dan Dan noodle at various restaurants/ countries, their Dan Dan noodle was by far the smallest portion I had ever seen. I took a video of it. It was like two big mouthful of noodle or an appetizer at a Korean restaurant. However, the noodle was very flavourful. It was not in a booth which was different from what I expected. The sauce might be a little bit too rich/ greasy for me. I had a slight discomfort in my stomach for the rest of the day. No complaints, though, as it was not expensive and the small portion just turned out to be perfect for what I needed. I might try their dumplings instead if I would come back to this restaurant because they...