It’s Sunday afternoon around 2pm and I need lunch. I’m tired of eating sandwiches all week, trying to avoid fast food, and don’t want to eat too much as I’m going home for dinner within a few hours. Lunch by yourself can be an awkward affair, better suited to grab and go, but you get used to it after a while. If you want good food, you figure out how to be comfortable eating alone. I had been wanting to try Dough Zone to see how they compared to the gold-standard Din Tai Feng for soup dumplings and this seemed like the perfect time to do it.
Dough Zone was still a zoo at 2pm with a 20 minute wait for a table. The fortunate part about dining by yourself, is that they can squeeze you into the counter.
soup dumplings – I loved these first of all, they had all the hallmarks of a good soup dumpling – plenty of fillings, they poured juice when you bit into them, the skin wasn’t too chewy and they had decent flavor; Din Tai Feng still holds the crown on these though – theirs are more delicate in the wrapping and have a bigger oomph on the meat flavor; however, these are only $9 vs. their $13 and doesn’t have the benefit of being a worldwide phenomenon
