Journey to the Dumpling

Mar 14

Journey to the Dumpling has been a restaurant that I’ve been wanting to go to for a long while. It had become somewhat of a legendary establishment as my friends would continuously talk it up. About a month ago, I decided on a whim to give it a try. Unfortunately, the wait that evening was over 2-hours. My family wasn’t about to sit around for a couple hours so we chose to go somewhere else. Thankfully, I learned that the best way to get a table at Journey to the Dumpling is to make an online reservation on the Yelp app. Then just leave at your leisure according to your reservation time. Knowing that made everything go extremely smoothly.

Journey to the Dumpling is in a strip mall area in Elk Grove. Elk Grove has strip malls all over the place, but the one with Journey to the Dumpling also houses a number of other quality restaurants. Journey to the Dumpling is by far the most popular restaurant there as you’ll often find people just milling about waiting for their seat time.

I had the idea that Journey to the Dumpling would be a bit on the fancier side of things, but it really isn’t. The restaurant has modest decorations - nothing that would really stand out to make it trendy from a restaurant design aspect. The restaurant is really set up to serve customers, clean up, and then serve more customers.

And there are a lot of customers! The restaurant was packed out with many guests on the waiting list. Thankfully, the servers and wait staff are very quick about their jobs and get things done quickly. They have to be this way to really allow people waiting the opportunity to get in for a meal.

Overall I’d say that the food at Journey to the Dumpling is very good. The quality of the food is above that of standard Chinese places around. But is the quality good enough to warrant a 2-hour wait? I’d say no. It actually surprises me how many people flock to this restaurant when other places offer similar items but without the long wait time.

Dumplings are in the name of the restaurant, and that’s what you should really go there to get. They have the famous soup dumplings that are still tremendously popular. The soup inside the ones I had at Journey to the Dumpling was scalding hot - just as it should be. I found the wrap around the dumpling to be nice and thin. Soup dumplings that have a thick wrap is just a sign of poor quality to me. They pretty much got it right here.

Aside from the dumplings, you can order noodles, rice dishes, and assorted bun and dim sum style foods. Of all the items we had, the steak and potatoes actually was a revelation to me. It seems like a dish that is catered to a western tongue, but my whole family loved it. Though it says it is spicy - the heat level is negligible. Grab a bowl of rice with this and you’ll be great.

In fact, just about any dish you order should be good as everything we had from some Chinese broccoli to Hong Kong style noodles were excellent.

Like I stated before, the food is a step above most places.

Journey to Dumpling is certainly worth a visit and the food experience is an enjoyable one. The only gripe I have with the restaurant is the insane wait time that they have. It’s not a restaurant that you can just go on a whim. You’ve got to plan your trip over there and make sure you get an online reservation early.

If you’re not in the mood to get all that done beforehand, other restaurants all around the Sacramento region offer food that is close to what you would find at Journey to the Dumpling. Journey just has that slight leg up when it comes to the quality and taste of each dish.

Website: www.journeytothedumpling.com

Address: 7419 Laguna Blvd #180, Elk Grove, CA 95758