On a recent LA trip, the BF and I stopped by Lu Dumpling House, which is owned by the people who own MaMa’s Lu. Being a big fan of Mama’s Lu, I had to check it out after reading about its opening on mmm-yoso.
Lu Dumpling House is a very small restaurant with only a handful of tables. It is only open Mon-Sat and only until 6pm. It seems most of its business is selling the frozen dumplings, which you can see the employees making in the kitchen. While the short hours may be a negative for some, I was happy to see that they are open in between lunch and dinner hours.
For our last few road trips, BF and I have been trying to make them shorter. We haven’t been able to visit Mama’s Lu since they are closed in the afternoon.
We had already eaten when we got to Lu Dumpling House. I was only interested in checking out a few dumplings and was mainly interested in bringing some frozen goodies home.
Once seated, we were given some complimentary peanuts and pickled cucumbers.
We ordered the scallion pancake, one of my favorite items from Mama’s Lu. For some reason while this pancake tasted good, it didn’t taste as good as I remembered from my visits at Mama’s Lu. Perhaps they didn’t cook it in enough oil or something. I’m not sure, but something was off.
I wanted to choose some dumpling flavors that I hadn’t tried before so we chose fennel pork dumplings.
The fennel taste was really strong, which took a little getting used to but I really enjoyed these and loved how juicy they were.
We also got some pumpkin and pork fried dumplings. I thought I would like this more but I didn’t really like this one and neither did the BF. I think the pumpkin flavor didn’t go very well with the pork filling and was a little bland.
I’ve tried to get frozen scallion pancakes and chive pockets from Mama’s Lu but they are often sold out. I had a hunch that with Lu Dumpling House I would have a better chance of getting them since they were mainly doing business through selling their frozen dumplings. Sure enough, I was able to get bags of each.
Service was great and we’ll definitely be back to pick up more frozen dumplings. The dine in menu unfortunately is not as big as the one at Mama’s Lu. Here is the menu here:
Lu Dumpling House
330 N Garfield Ave
Monterey Park, CA 91754
(626) 307-2700
I like to order the beef noodle soup only cost about 5 buck but the portion is huge for one person and it will take at least three people to finish it. The taste is good with plenty of beef and the soup is kind of sweet. I also like the xiao long bao which is cheap and tasty. I highly recommend these dishes at this Mama Lu’s location.
I’m not a fan of the beef noodle soup. It’s big but I think the soup broth is too light. I’ve had the xiao long bao and I think it’s pretty good for the price. I need to come back here again.
Hey Kirbie – Glad to know you made it over to Lu’s. That dill and pork Jiaozi is pretty good; it’s very common to have those in Shandong. as for the pumpkin dumplings…… those just started popping up when we left LA in ’00.
I wish they sold them frozen! I really liked them. This was the first time I’ve seen either flavor at a dumpling place.
Pumpkin in dumplings? I don’t know – just sounds really really weird to me! I don’t think I’ve ever had savory pumpkin dish – especially in an asian dish! They didn’t seem to pan fry them that well – could it have been a little crispier on the bottom?
Nice post!
Have you ever had kabocha? It’s a type of pumpkin used a lot in Japanese cooking and also sometimes chinese. I see it all the time at Ranch 99. Anyway, kabocha is cooked as a savory dish so I’m used to eating pumpkin in a savory way. Actually it might have been kabocha in this. Not sure. Since pumpkins aren’t really in season. Usually when I see pumpkin dishes on an asian menu they are usually using kabocha. But yeah, they didn’t fry them that well. The bottoms were pretty pale and not that crisp. I’ve had good fried dumplings from Mama’s lu, so I think this one was just a little off.
The prices aren’t bad for hand made dumplings!