Dumpling Kitchen — Restaurant in Somerville

First time ordering here 4 months ago was a pretty good experience. Prices were great and so was the food. My family has placed orders here regularly (about every 1-2 weeks) since then and I've noticed the prices steadily rising. The food, however remained good and the portions were large enough for leftovers the next night. Things changed today...

Tonight I ordered the same order I always order (order online/pickup&pay in store) and although the price seemed higher than I've ever paid, I was offered a 5% discount coupon when submitting the order ($1.80. No big deal, but whatever. I'll take it.) I went in to pick up my order, paid, and when I got home I realized I was charged the full amount in the store. No discount. Again, it was $1.80... not worth the hassle to go back, but a little annoying and I felt cheated. I still looked forward to the food... until I pulled out my favorite dish (Braised Tofu with Scallion and Veggie) and saw that the container it was in was about 1/3 SMALLER than usual! I've ordered this a dozen times and know it well. What used to be two decent adult size servings was reduced to one serving. So sad. They totally cut the portion size while maintaining or possibly RAISING the price. I don't remember that dish being $8.50 before. Not good, Dumpling Kitchen.

I do like your food and would love to keep ordering form you, but I will not order again if the dishes are getting smaller. I understand a restaurant occasionally raising prices. But when you reduce the size of a product your customers have gotten used to and keep prices the SAME... or RAISE them? You will lose faithful...

Ordered on a Sunday night between 9 and 10 pm. for delivery. I'm not sure if this is a restaurant or a front for something else. It was certainly the worst Chinese food I've ever had the mispleasure of eating. Where to begin, I suppose I'll start with the most confusing part. Upon opening my delivery bag I first see a "Smart Cup" with temperature display. At first I had assumed my dasher had accidently placed it into the wrong order as an additional pick up or something, but NOPE, it had the restaurant's name and logo on it. I can only assume this was some sort of pre-apology for what it was sitting on top of.

Every item had something wrong with it, I'm not talking 1 or 2 things, no. Literally everything inside the bag was either overcooked, missing ingredients, or just made entirely wrong. Hell, even the provided Chopsticks were covered in splintered wood.

Crab Rangoons were overinflated balls of nothing but cream cheese (not even sealed closed) Pineapple Fried Rice did not include chicken (which was extra and paid for) It was also not even fried, more like... boiled, not even steamed. The Spring Rolls were actually just prepackaged from a freezer box (and were unfortunately the only thing that was acceptable.) Both of the Lo Mein dishes were overcooked to the point of the noodles being crispy. Which I didn't think was possible for Lo Mein.

Normally I give places the benefit of the doubt and don't leave bad reviews, but this was certainly a special case.

Hopefully my 15 hour drive in the morning isn't interrupted by a bathroom stop at every exit. (Update, it...

They charged me $22.50 for a menu item that cost $15 on their menu :(

Edit: In response to the owner's reply to this review, I wanted to post my receipt as proof. It's not itemized, but you could verify yourself that their in-restaurant menu does not contain a single item that costs more than $20, and the one item I ordered was merely $15.95. No other items were added. Neither did I order on an app. This was at the register. Even if the menu is outdated, a 50% increase is unjustified.

As to the reason why I didn't argue, it was 11:15, I only went inside cause Sam's Shwarmas next door decided to close an hour early, I hate conflict, I was exhausted, and I had to wait 10 minutes at the register for someone to take my order. This is a warning for people who don't want to deal with this crap when they want their late nite food. I surely wouldn't want to be in this situation again.

And as for the food? Despite being "Mala spicy beef", there's hardly any actual Mala. The Mala numbing effect is minimal (but I was able to taste some of it), with the spiciness mostly just being capsaicin. It was alright, but disappointing, should have paired with complimentary (or cheap) rice, and even $16 would've been too much for what I got. The $23 mark-up just made the experience...