369 Shanghai Cafe Review

At some point two weeks ago, I was in the Fremont/Milpitas vicinity at lunchtime and recalled that 369 Shanghai Cafe was mentioned by some people as serving xiao long bao (XLB) (dumplings with soup inside). I went, and it was comparable to the Shanghai Dumpling House. (The menus were also similar: besides the few shanghai specials it was all typical Chinese food.)

I liked the dumplings here slightly more -- they had more liquid in them, made obvious by the fact that some of them had so much liquid that when you picked them up you could see the soup sloshing around. But they were more fragile than the Dumpling House's ones, and some came stuck together and were hard to separate. And, from eating so many dumplings at once, I learned there really is a brief time during which they're perfect. Eat them too soon and you'll have a mouthful of boiling liquid; too late and it'll be as if you took a drink at the same time as eating a dumpling. But at the perfect middle time, when you bite the dumpling you get a warm essence spreading out from the dumpling and infusing your whole body.

I also had okay won ton soup: the soup was fairly tasteless and the won tons a little more noodley than I'd prefer. Not bad, but not particularly good either.

Original Announcement

Since 369 Shanghai Cafe was the result of serendipity -myself recalling as I drove to work late one day that I remember reading about a good dumpling house in Fremont-, there was no original announcement.

Comments from Other Attendees

Feel free to add remarks here.