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East Dumpling House, Forty Kinds of Dumplings and Kabobs at 12. N. Washington Street in Downtown Rockville


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Did a quick run through here for lunch yesterday. They've just opened, so not everything is available, and there's still a bit of chaos in the place.

No website yet, but photos of the menu here. Note: this is the location where Lola, the Argentinian cafe used to be. Same shopping plaza as Pita Hut. Parking is limited, and the put up a gate like the RTC across the street (my guess is people were trying to park there and walk across the street.) Two hours free with validation.

I had the lunch special with "pork and shrimp" dumplings. Similar in style to China Bistro, but the wrappers were thicker and more doughy. Also, the filling was ground much finer and more dense - it was almost a meatball in the wrapper. Also, for the "cold side" they tried to push a green salad, but I pushed back and they relented with what I think was the chinese-style potato salad, which is shredded potatoes and carrots in vinegar. Tasty, but a strong advantage to China Bistro at the moment.

The menu is very extensive for dumplings - almost 40 different stuffings. Also "kabobs" - will have to check that out in the future.

Drinks are either bubble tea or sodas from the cooler - they didn't even have hot tea when I was there.

Worth keeping an eye on, but nothing compelling yet.

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there's still a bit of chaos in the place.

Chaos best describes a Friday evening meal here.

They have seats for about 27 in a space that holds about 20. I wasn't able to move my chair back; i had to slide out sideways to get up from the table. You order at a counter, pay (including tip) then sit and wait for the food to come to the table. My table of 4 was given 4 soy bowls, 3 forks, two chopsticks. The food came out randomly with my bubble tea coming after a few dishes came and went.

The dumplings are a good deal on a price/ounce basis - 12 dumplings, two bites each for $7.95 +/-. I can't really comment on the quality, they seemed OK to me but a little more doughy than others I've enjoyed. Sauces for all dumplings are soy and a chili-pepper flake paste.

These are the kinds of things that should get better with time, and part of their issue is their popularity (at least as we saw it, with people waiting for tables.) Chaos was the theme - it reminded me of eating in a pizza place on a summer Saturday night on the boardwalk - the staff is scrambling and doing their best. I'd think that take-out might be the better choice, however I saw a guy come in when I did to pick up an order he called in. He left about the same time we wrapped up our sit-down meal, roughly 30 minutes later.

I'd like to try them at a less busy period.

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BTW - I think there's some connection to "China Bistro" at 755 hungerford drive. Is this an outpost? Has China Bistro closed? I'd swear the plates said China Bistro.

Does this have anything to do with Bob's noodles and that bit of confusion?

China Bistro and Bob's (x2) are open and doing well, and unconnected to this place. Completely different regions of China.

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First time here yesterday for carryout. We tried the steamed chicken "double mushroom" and the egg/chive dumplings (apparently boiled) and the lamb/chicken skewer combo with lo mein.  The dumplings are definitely a thicker variety - doughier and less delicate than other types of steamed asian dumplings.  (They also will fry them for 50 cents extra if that is your thing, but I never really like fried dumplings). That being said I really liked the egg/chive dumplings - very fresh and flavorful.  However, the chicken mushroom (not sure what the double meant) were bland, bland, bland.  The dumpling come with generic soy sauce and some chili oil.  They would probably better with some homemade dipping sauce which I might do tonight with the leftovers.

The kabobs were kind of disappointing - the combo came with 4 kabobs (2 lamb and 2 chicken) and you have a choice of side starch (french fries, white rice, fried rice or lo mein noodles) and we opted for lo mein.  The lamb which I had read was traditional to this Chinese region's cuisine (I think a northern one, but am unsure) were cooked well done and very very small chunks so generally pretty dried out meat. The chicken was fatter chunks but as with many white meat chicken skewers it was also dried out. However they smelled great - they put a heavy coating of chili spice and cumin on them. The bright spot was that the lo mein mixed with some bok choy and scallion pieces and rubbed off kabob spices was excellent - one of the better lo mein's I've had.

I probably won't be back - but I'm almost never in this part of town anymore anyways. But that is the fun of adventures in eating - nice to learn about these lesser-known places in less trafficed areas (this is in an older shopping center 2 blocks or so from the Rockville Town Center) and you never know when you will hit food-phoria.

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I went months ago and never thought to post.  Dumplings were forgettable, but we found the kabobs to be very good.  The lamb was especially good.  I recall it being a bit spicy, but on our visit it wasn't dry.  Same platter mentioned above with 2 lamb and 2 chicken on a huge bed of fried rice. 

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I went months ago and never thought to post.  Dumplings were forgettable, but we found the kabobs to be very good.  The lamb was especially good.  I recall it being a bit spicy, but on our visit it wasn't dry.  Same platter mentioned above with 2 lamb and 2 chicken on a huge bed of fried rice. 

The stuff to order here is anything with the (homemade) tofu.

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First visit back in a long time the other day. They have taken over almost the entire food mall although construction isn't complete.

Cucumber salad, cold eggplant and a plate of dumplings because every table eating them was making animalistic sounds as they devoured.  The dumplings were superb. Better than Mama's dumpling which is high praise indeed.  The cucumber salad had so much garlic and was so sharp it could be used to cut glass.  The eggplant didn't have as much mala sauce as usual but the steamed eggplant slices were wonderful.  By far the best meal I have had here.

A previous meal we had the sticks in sichuan hot sauce and it is one of the hottest dishes I have ever had.  They give you the broth to go after.  Tons of sticks with things from tofu skin to shrimp to veggies to meat.  All soaking in a broth thick with chiles & peppercorns.  I get a bowl of rice and pour the broth over liek I would a tang and rice at a Korean joint.  I get funny looks and am reminded of how hot this dish is the next morning, but while consuming it the ma la induced hallucinations are wonderful! I am pretty sure this is Chuanchuan skewers in Chinese.

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We had a catering gig X-Mas day which ended at dinnertime and we were hungry. So we decided to have Jewish X-Mas and head to Rockville. East Dumpling House. Good choice {mainly}

After the remodel, they have a more ambitious menu which mostly works based on our 5 items ordered. 

Egg and chive bun was a flatbread stuffed with Chinese chives and egg. This was a superb dish totally addictive. The bread outside was crispy on the browned surfave and stretchy/chewy inside. The filling was applied with a light hand {a good thing} and was oily in a fabulous way. I dunked mine into hot oil and black vinegar.

Wide homemade crystal noodle was a plate of chewy noodles, fried chiles, cucumber, green onion in a tangy sauce. Fantastic! A better deal as a $6.99 small plate than as a $18 entree.

Soft Tofu with Szechuan seasonal. Seasonal what was not revealed. Silky tofu that was truly up to the moniker, in a broth with Szechuan pickle, Szechuan peppercorn and fried chiles. If you ate the chiles it was fiery hot. It is served with a single soup spoon but we split it between two.

Pan Fried Dumplings with dried shrimp, shrimp and pork were wonderful. Very juicy to the point of juice spraying out if you bit arelessly. Nice crispness on the bottom, the dough thick but not doughy. The filling were smaller meatballs but very tasting. As good a pan fried dumpling as I ever have had a Mama's dumplings. 12 to an order.

The above let us almost full, and less glutinous folk might have stopped. But if they did, they would have missed the absolute worst grilled/steamed whole scallops I have ever been served. They left the bands whole but took out the roe/gonad sacks. They used acrid minced garlic that looked like it was out of a jar. They did not use enough sesame oil and soy so the shells were filled with a broth that was more water than flavorful. And just to top it off, they overcooked the scallops as  much as Five Guys overcooks their burgers. All for only $27 for three sad scallops. You could almost hear them complain "I died for this shit?"

Our drink was soju yougurt and it was a massive serving for $16.

It was Christmas Day so they were slammed {we were the last table to get in without  a wait} and the service was as sad as the scallops but not because of anyone giving bad service, just too many people to few servers.

Our neighbor table enjoyed skewers {we usually load up on skewers but not tongiht, we could have had 8 skewers for the price of the terrible scallops}  that looked crispy and coated with cumin,salt and chile, & a potato and eggplant dish that looked and smelled great {we were that close} and a couple of soups. One of the runners tried to give us a neighboring tables fried rice which also smelled delicious.

This is a seriously great restaurant. It ranks up there with the best of Chinese. Right now I'd rather go here than Xian Gourmet or Panda Gourmet. It is far superior to the sadly overrated Peter Chiang empire where my bad/mediocre meals keep piling up to the point of my not caring to go to any more. There are hot pot restaurant that I like as much {Hot Pot Legend being the leader in that bunch.}

This is not the same restaurant it once was: a few OK things with a lot of boring dumplings. It is now top notch dumplings, skewers, cold plates, hot starters. soups and casseroles etc. I just can't recommend the fresh seafood. But do go. And they are open late {2 or 3 am on weekends, 1 am Christmas.}

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2 hours ago, deangold said:

We had a catering gig X-Mas day which ended at dinnertime and we were hungry. So we decided to have Jewish X-Mas and head to Rockville. East Dumpling House. Good choice {mainly}

After the remodel, they have a more ambitious menu which mostly works based on our 5 items ordered. 

Egg and chive bun was a flatbread stuffed with Chinese chives and egg. This was a superb dish totally addictive. The bread outside was crispy on the browned surfave and stretchy/chewy inside. The filling was applied with a light hand {a good thing} and was oily in a fabulous way. I dunked mine into hot oil and black vinegar.

Wide homemade crystal noodle was a plate of chewy noodles, fried chiles, cucumber, green onion in a tangy sauce. Fantastic! A better deal as a $6.99 small plate than as a $18 entree.

Soft Tofu with Szechuan seasonal. Seasonal what was not revealed. Silky tofu that was truly up to the moniker, in a broth with Szechuan pickle, Szechuan peppercorn and fried chiles. If you ate the chiles it was fiery hot. It is served with a single soup spoon but we split it between two.

Pan Fried Dumplings with dried shrimp, shrimp and pork were wonderful. Very juicy to the point of juice spraying out if you bit arelessly. Nice crispness on the bottom, the dough thick but not doughy. The filling were smaller meatballs but very tasting. As good a pan fried dumpling as I ever have had a Mama's dumplings. 12 to an order.

The above let us almost full, and less glutinous folk might have stopped. But if they did, they would have missed the absolute worst grilled/steamed whole scallops I have ever been served. They left the bands whole but took out the roe/gonad sacks. They used acrid minced garlic that looked like it was out of a jar. They did not use enough sesame oil and soy so the shells were filled with a broth that was more water than flavorful. And just to top it off, they overcooked the scallops as  much as Five Guys overcooks their burgers. All for only $27 for three sad scallops. You could almost hear them complain "I died for this shit?"

Our drink was soju yougurt and it was a massive serving for $16.

It was Christmas Day so they were slammed {we were the last table to get in without  a wait} and the service was as sad as the scallops but not because of anyone giving bad service, just too many people to few servers.

Our neighbor table enjoyed skewers {we usually load up on skewers but not tongiht, we could have had 8 skewers for the price of the terrible scallops}  that looked crispy and coated with cumin,salt and chile, & a potato and eggplant dish that looked and smelled great {we were that close} and a couple of soups. One of the runners tried to give us a neighboring tables fried rice which also smelled delicious.

This is a seriously great restaurant. It ranks up there with the best of Chinese. Right now I'd rather go here than Xian Gourmet or Panda Gourmet. It is far superior to the sadly overrated Peter Chiang empire where my bad/mediocre meals keep piling up to the point of my not caring to go to any more. There are hot pot restaurant that I like as much {Hot Pot Legend being the leader in that bunch.}

This is not the same restaurant it once was: a few OK things with a lot of boring dumplings. It is now top notch dumplings, skewers, cold plates, hot starters. soups and casseroles etc. I just can't recommend the fresh seafood. But do go. And they are open late {2 or 3 am on weekends, 1 am Christmas.}

Thanks, Dean -- that's an extremely useful post about a place I Iiked but didn't love before its expansion.  Will definitely check it out again soon.  (Jin River still excellent, btw.)

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1 hour ago, Marty L. said:

Thanks, Dean -- that's an extremely useful post about a place I Iiked but didn't love before its expansion.  Will definitely check it out again soon.  (Jin River still excellent, btw.)

It's a lot harder for us to get from Landmark/Annandale to Rockville and my love of Hot Pot Legend makes it hard to go elsewhere {even EDH.} But I have SJR on my list.

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27 minutes ago, deangold said:

It's a lot harder for us to get from Landmark/Annandale to Rockville and my love of Hot Pot Legend makes it hard to go elsewhere {even EDH.} But I have SJR on my list.

I went to Hot Pot Legend on Tuesday night.  There is a sign that says they are opening a location at One Loudoun.

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On 12/26/2019 at 10:40 AM, deangold said:

We had a catering gig X-Mas day which ended at dinnertime and we were hungry. So we decided to have Jewish X-Mas and head to Rockville. East Dumpling House. Good choice {mainly}

After the remodel, they have a more ambitious menu which mostly works based on our 5 items ordered. 

Egg and chive bun was a flatbread stuffed with Chinese chives and egg. This was a superb dish totally addictive. The bread outside was crispy on the browned surfave and stretchy/chewy inside. The filling was applied with a light hand {a good thing} and was oily in a fabulous way. I dunked mine into hot oil and black vinegar.

Wide homemade crystal noodle was a plate of chewy noodles, fried chiles, cucumber, green onion in a tangy sauce. Fantastic! A better deal as a $6.99 small plate than as a $18 entree.

Soft Tofu with Szechuan seasonal. Seasonal what was not revealed. Silky tofu that was truly up to the moniker, in a broth with Szechuan pickle, Szechuan peppercorn and fried chiles. If you ate the chiles it was fiery hot. It is served with a single soup spoon but we split it between two.

Pan Fried Dumplings with dried shrimp, shrimp and pork were wonderful. Very juicy to the point of juice spraying out if you bit arelessly. Nice crispness on the bottom, the dough thick but not doughy. The filling were smaller meatballs but very tasting. As good a pan fried dumpling as I ever have had a Mama's dumplings. 12 to an order.

The above let us almost full, and less glutinous folk might have stopped. But if they did, they would have missed the absolute worst grilled/steamed whole scallops I have ever been served. They left the bands whole but took out the roe/gonad sacks. They used acrid minced garlic that looked like it was out of a jar. They did not use enough sesame oil and soy so the shells were filled with a broth that was more water than flavorful. And just to top it off, they overcooked the scallops as  much as Five Guys overcooks their burgers. All for only $27 for three sad scallops. You could almost hear them complain "I died for this shit?"

Our drink was soju yougurt and it was a massive serving for $16.

It was Christmas Day so they were slammed {we were the last table to get in without  a wait} and the service was as sad as the scallops but not because of anyone giving bad service, just too many people to few servers.

Our neighbor table enjoyed skewers {we usually load up on skewers but not tongiht, we could have had 8 skewers for the price of the terrible scallops}  that looked crispy and coated with cumin,salt and chile, & a potato and eggplant dish that looked and smelled great {we were that close} and a couple of soups. One of the runners tried to give us a neighboring tables fried rice which also smelled delicious.

This is a seriously great restaurant. It ranks up there with the best of Chinese. Right now I'd rather go here than Xian Gourmet or Panda Gourmet. It is far superior to the sadly overrated Peter Chiang empire where my bad/mediocre meals keep piling up to the point of my not caring to go to any more. There are hot pot restaurant that I like as much {Hot Pot Legend being the leader in that bunch.}

This is not the same restaurant it once was: a few OK things with a lot of boring dumplings. It is now top notch dumplings, skewers, cold plates, hot starters. soups and casseroles etc. I just can't recommend the fresh seafood. But do go. And they are open late {2 or 3 am on weekends, 1 am Christmas.}

Posts like this are why i love this site--because of a review from someone whose palate I trust I went to a place i wouldn't have otherwise and discovered a new gem. I'd been to the dumpling house a couple years ago and been underwhelmed and hadn't been back. Dean's rave got my mouth watering so we went this weekend and are very happy we did and plan to go back again soon.

we had the egg and chive bun, wide homemade crystal noodle, and soft tofu with szechuan seasonal and all were great. the broth on the tofu was particularly nice, it was almost like a soup version of mapo tofu.   the mushroom and vegetable dumplings had a great texture but i wish the filling had been more flavorful.  the chinese potato salad was great--shredded potatoes and carrots in a sour dressing, almost like a pickle, with a hint of chile at the end. we liked this a lot, both on its own merit and because it was a nice palate cleanser or cooler when you'd had too much spice. and who knew raw potato could be so good in salads? the vegetable and tofu skewers were interesting--pressed tofu wrapped around a little bundle of mushrooms and scallions, with a coating of cumin,  chile, and maybe garlic. they were good, though not as good as the previously mentioned dishes. The sauce on the dan dan noodles (ordered without meat) was great and more complex than other versions we've had, though the noodles were a bit too soft for our taste.if you could put this sauce on the wide noodles from a & J it would be amazing. the final thing we had was ordered off a picture on the wall, it was yam noodles with sour sauce or something like that. it was wonderful--squares of yam jelly (very similar to the clear noodles, but smaller and fatter) in a sour soup with cilantro and peanuts. service was very nice and friendly too. the only thing i'd add is that the kitchen got two of our orders a bit wrong--the dumplings were supposed to be pan fried but weren't and the first time the dan dan noodles came, they had meat, which we'd asked them to omit. but everything else was great, and even the things we liked least were very good. 

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I, too, had a very good meal based upon Dean's suggestions, albeit not as wonderful as our recent Jin River meal.  The place is unrecognizable compared to its previous iteration.  Worthy of further investigation: The table next to ours ordered a preposterously large platter of (reportedly quite spicy) steamed crawfish, which they loved (and had ordered before).  The Bayou comes to Harbin, apparently.  (I believe it's on the order of $40-50, but it easily fed three.) 

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On 8/2/2019 at 9:59 AM, deangold said:

I am pretty sure this is Chuanchuan skewers in Chinese.

We had these I think in Chengdu- you could load up on skewers you choose, take your choice up front, they would have you select a garlic or spicy broth, and bring your skewers in a cold brother of whichever of those you selected.  There was all sorts of meat and vegetables.  I loved the lotus root.  It was a big street snack, although lots of fast casual places did this too.  They loved this, so if they haven't been to EDH for this, we might have to go here with them and check it out!  

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55 minutes ago, ktmoomau said:

We had these I think in Chengdu- you could load up on skewers you choose, take your choice up front, they would have you select a garlic or spicy broth, and bring your skewers in a cold brother of whichever of those you selected.  There was all sorts of meat and vegetables.  I loved the lotus root.  It was a big street snack, although lots of fast casual places did this too.  They loved this, so if they haven't been to EDH for this, we might have to go here with them and check it out!  

They serve theirs warm. 

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20 hours ago, ktmoomau said:

We had these I think in Chengdu- you could load up on skewers you choose, take your choice up front, they would have you select a garlic or spicy broth, and bring your skewers in a cold brother of whichever of those you selected.  There was all sorts of meat and vegetables.  I loved the lotus root.  It was a big street snack, although lots of fast casual places did this too.  They loved this, so if they haven't been to EDH for this, we might have to go here with them and check it out!  

This is the specialty of Friendship BBQ in Rockville Town Square.  Haven't been yet, but I really want to.  [Non-Sequitur alert!!]  On Friendship's menus, there is something called "Grilled Chicken Skeleton" they have it a couple of different ways and I am very intrigued as to what it is.

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 Got carry out from there again this weekend and it was great as usual. The egg and chive pan fried buns and the Crystal noodles with special sauce were amazing per usual. Tried their hot and sour soup for the first time and was pleasantly impressed – definitely homemade and the best I’ve had in the area   Very flavorful. 

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