Restaurant of the Week: One Plus One Dumpling House

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One Plus One Dumpling House, 14720 Pipeline Ave. (at Chino Hills Parkway), Chino Hills

Chinese dumplings are rare in Inland Valley restaurants, making One Plus One Dumpling House almost unique. The restaurant opened in Chino a couple of years back, relocating in April 2012 to Chino Hills next to the Lebanese restaurant Mes Amis, taking the place of the Thai restaurant Swasdee. Chino Hills is more of a culinary melting pot than you’d guess.

Three friends and I met there for lunch recently. The space looks almost unchanged from Swasdee’s occupancy, being modern, L-shaped and small (nine tables or booths).

The menu has some 20 varieties of dumplings, most of which can be ordered steamed, boiled or pan fried. Boiled are soup dumplings (xiao long bao), steamed are dry, fried are pot stickers. Noodle dishes and beef, lamb, chicken, pork and vegetarian dishes fill out the menu.

It’s the kind of place where, while they do have sweet and sour pork and orange chicken, they also have the non-Panda Express-approved spicy frog in firepot, spicy intestine and lamb with sour vegetable.

We ordered a lot of food: vegetable boiled dumplings ($7, pictured above), house special noodle ($7), shrimp and pineapple ($13), deep fried chicken with chili and garlic ($9) and a beef wrap ($5, pictured below). The staff threw in pork XLBs ($7), which they seem to do if you order $20 or more in food.

We like Chinese food, but we’re not experts. One at our table said approvingly, “This pork dumpling is really good,” while sampling the beef wrap. Which gave us something to kid him about. I can attest that the beef wrap is a respectable knockoff of 101 Noodle Express’ celebrated beef roll.

We all said we would be willing to come back. One friend said: “I thought the noodles were fantastic” — he really was talking about noodles — “and the deep-fried chicken was especially good.” Service was efficient and they kept our water glasses filled. The number of San Gabriel Valley-style Chinese restaurants in the Inland Valley remains small, but it’s growing, one by one.

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