Double the Dumplings

Having discovered a lot of pertinent information through eavesdropping over the years, the most useful scoop I recently gleaned from a conversation within earshot was that Journey to the Dumpling had finally opened its eagerly awaited flagship eatery in midtown Sacramento last November. As a fan of the original Elk Grove location, I had been anticipating the day when one of my most craveable local restaurant dishes—Journey’s silky-spicy chili wontons—wouldn’t entail a trafficky highway commute from my East Sacramento home or a massive DoorDash upcharge.

I visited the new midtown location at 21st and Q streets on a Tuesday evening in January, a few days after I had intercepted the third-party intel at a local ramen shop. When I checked the automated wait list at 4:30 p.m., the standby time was 6-10 minutes. I officially added my name to the queue closer to 5 p.m. and was seated approximately 45 minutes later—quickly mushrooming wait times for dinner are as synonymous with Journey as dumplings. (PSA: There’s less of a bottleneck during lunch.) From the street, wraparound, full-height windows provided an alluring glimpse of the energetic interior. Enthusiastic diners were engaged in various acts of dynamic consumption: wrangling hand-pulled biang biang noodles from a piquant crimson broth, for instance, or cooling a chopstick-punctured xiao long bao soup dumpling, known colloquially as XLB, with a whoosh of air through pursed lips.

Journey’s xiao long bao (XLB) soup dumpling boasts at least 18 pleats to help seal the pork and chicken bone broth inside.

The scene reflected the rising popularity of handcrafted dumplings in the broad spectrum of California’s dining landscape. As food writer Lucas Kwan Peterson noted in the Los Angeles Times in November about the current boom, “more dumplings is always, always a good thing.” Locally, Hidden Dumpling House (likewise of Elk Grove) and the similarly monikered Dumpling House (no relation; this one originated in Davis) have also expanded into midtown over the past few years, while Tasty Dumpling, which opened in Curtis Park in 2021, recently announced a forthcoming second location near Arden-Arcade.

Back in 2015, Journey’s founding owners Chris and Yvonne Tan ventured to China—the motherland of dumplings, where these hot pockets symbolize wealth and prosperity since they resemble pieces of gold and silver—on a research and development expedition before opening the original Elk Grove spot a year later. The restaurant’s name is a nod to this epic trip, as well as to the Chinese classical novel Journey to the West. The couple—he’s Chinese, she’s Vietnamese—also spent time reviewing potential chefs, eventually recruiting a dumpling expert from Beijing to help them create authentic recipes.

Journey to the Dumpling founders Chris and Yvonne Tan at the midtown location with their 1-year-old son, Conor Hieu

They launched their culinary adventure in Shanghai, where XLB reportedly originated in the 1870s. According to the South China Morning Post, a restaurant owner named Huang Mingxian “invented the dumpling by adding aspic [savory gelatin] to his pork mince—upon steaming, the aspic would become liquid, thereby filling the dumpling with soup.” The publication added that “the best are supposed to have 14 pleats at the top.” Exceeding this mark of excellence, Journey’s XLB are folded with at least 18 pleats to secure the rich, ginger-scented broth brewed primarily from pork and chicken bones, which are naturally loaded with the luscious collagen needed to set the aspic. That said, Yvonne and Chris “weren’t too impressed” with the big names of XLB in Shanghai like Din Tai Fung and Paradise Dynasty, and instead made their most memorable food discoveries in seemingly unremarkable locations. “We really enjoyed the dumplings from the mom-and-pop places that we stumbled on just walking around,” says Yvonne.

This includes the soup-filled, pan-fried buns (sheng jian bao) that a Shanghainese hawker had nonchalantly thrown into a plastic bag—a no-frills takeaway container. These XLB cousins are slightly sweeter (thanks to the addition of corn to the filling), definitely chewier (due to breadier dough), but equally soupy. Now a staple on the Journey menu, Yvonne says that her appetite for sheng jian bao comes down to its crunchy browned bottom. “I’m a ‘fried’ kind of girl,” she says.

High five, same here! For this reason, we agree that ordering a dish from Journey’s salt-and-pepper-fried fare—tofu is the most popular, but spare ribs are my favorite—is essential to the restaurant experience, dumplings be damned. The secret to that utter umami flavor? House-made fish salt crafted from pulverized dried flounder.

In Beijing, the couple discovered roujiamo, a street food commonly referred to as a “Chinese burger.” A bit of a misnomer, in my opinion, since no patty is actually involved—the shredded pork filling, which gets its vegetal lift from bell pepper, green onion and cilantro, is scooped into, rather than positioned onto, a griddled bao bun. While in Hong Kong, the two stopped by Mak’s Noodle for shrimp wonton noodle soup on the recommendation of the late Anthony Bourdain in his television series The Layover. “It was just a small bowl of egg noodles with shrimp and soup. So simple, so good,” recalls Yvonne.

Roujiamo, aka “Chinese burger,” stuffed with shredded stewed pork, green onion, bell pepper and cilantro

Maybe it was inspiration from this indelible bowl, or maybe it’s the Tan family heritage coming through (Chris’ brother, William, also a co-owner in the business, notes that chow mein and chow fun are from the southern China region of Canton, the Tans’ ancestral homeland), but Journey’s selection of noodle dishes seems unparalleled among many local Chinese restaurants. From bowls of hearty soup to tangled, wok-charred nests, Journey’s noodles divulge some of the menu’s deepest flavors (the chow fun with black bean sauce and tan tan mein, for example, achieve complexity through fermented legumes and vegetables) and most satisfyingly toothsome textures (the aforementioned “biang biang” noodles are so named for the sound of the hand-pulled dough slapping on the counter, a process that develops the gluten for that trademark chew).

While the midtown Journey plans to serve Peking-style roast duck soon, the two locations otherwise share the same menu. Even so, William offers an off-the-cuff report of the different ordering trends between the flagship and the original. In general, he says, midtown attracts more vegetarians partaking of the dumplings stuffed with fennel, kale and mushroom or plant-based Impossible “meat.” He also notes that midtown customers tend to indulge in more dumpling-related dishes rather than chow mein or fried rice. As a city omnivore who prefers noodles and rice over dumplings, I must respectfully take William’s informal survey with a grain of dried-flounder salt.

Spicy noodle soup with hand-pulled biang biang noodles in hot and sour broth

The main difference between the two locations is as glaring as a neon sign—or eight. To say that the new midtown location is flashier than its older, much more modest Elk Grove sibling would be an understatement—to wit, its entire west wall is arranged with a gallery of custom animated neon that beams red and gold (a color duo symbolic of good fortune) and depicts everything from a restroom wayfinder to an intentionally inverted Chinese “fu” character that showers down success and prosperity on everyone. (In contrast, the Elk Grove dining room’s walls feature prints of a historic Chinese hand scroll painting depicting a traditional festival.)

Designers Kele Dobrinski and Christina Valencia—the married founders of the hospitality studio Colossus Mfg. whose clients have included other local establishments like Canon and Faria Bakery—were inspired by Asia’s hawker culture when designing the midtown space. “We definitely wanted to bring people into the vibrancy of a crowded street in Shanghai or Singapore,” explains Valencia. As such, in midtown, tables are closer together, while a red cast from the neon builds ambiance and a sinuous wave of red paper lanterns suspended above the booths evokes “the movement of a dragon wading through the streets.” From there, a pressed-tin ceiling conjures the elegance of long-celebrated Chinese banquet halls and restaurants like Mister Jiu’s in San Francisco, while the redesigned menus and tableware are now emblazoned with punchy graphics by Colossus—including a collage of Asian neon signs and a custom typeface resembling Chinese characters.

After all, a recent New York Times feature about restaurant-menu trends mentioned that “bolder and brighter” menu aesthetics are now considered “part of the interior design.” Also in demand, according to the report, are “nostalgic desserts,” of which Journey’s house-made egg tarts certainly qualify: Even though Chinese-style egg tarts emerged in 1920s department stores in Canton, they were inspired by European egg tarts, which have a history dating back to the Middle Ages. With a barely sweet golden custard and a tender crust laminated within a flaky millimeter of its buttery existence, these little pastries—place your orders for them accordingly, since they require 30 minutes to prepare—are as delightful and delicious as the dumplings that came before them, proving that the journey is indeed the reward. 

Midtown’s Journey to the Dumpling. 1700 21st St. 916-822-4473. journeytothedumpling.com

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