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I’m on a mission to figure out who has the best dumplings in town. Today, I tried Mandarin Noodle Deli in Temple City. The family that owns Mandarin Noodle Deli has been cooking up Northern China style cuisine for about 20 years, but this particular establishment has only been around since May 2004. From the looks of things, Mandarin Noodle Deli will be around for a while.

Mandarin Noodle Deli is mainly known for, as its name states, over 30 different noodle dishes. This includes soup noodles, glass noodles, cold noodles, etc. If you are a fan of noodles, I think this is the place for you. On a hot day like today, I decided to stick with just dumplings and tried the meat & shrimp dumplings and fish & leek dumplings ($5.75 each). Both orders come in a set of 10 dumplings and both are very heavy on the leek. I found these dumplings to be merely adequate when I compare them to the delicious, flavorful ones at Dumpling 10053. I know it might not seem fair to compare the two, but since they are both serving up authentic Northern China style cuisine… it’s hard for me not to think of Dumpling 10053.

It seems the regulars at Mandarin Noodle Deli have figured out what’s good. I observed that all the other customers (restaurant diners and to-go orders) generally started with either the sliced beef with pancake ($5.99) or the thin onion pancake ($2.90). I thought the former might be too heavy for me (especially after seeing how big that order is), so I tried the onion pancake instead. It was quite good - extremely crispy but not greasy, not overwhelming with the onions, and not too thick or too thin.

I also tried another dish typical of the northern region - wonton with hot spicy sauce. At some restaurants, this dish can be a bit intimidating because all you get is a bowl of wonton drenched in the red, red chili oil. At Mandarin Noodle Deli, the chili oil is held back some and found under all the wontons. Unlike other places, my mouth did not burn up with this dish, but still… I felt there was something lacking the flavor of the wonton.

In general, I would recommend Mandarin Noodle Deli, but probably not for the dumplings. Stick with Din Tai Fung and Dumpling 10053 for that. I think the pancakes (either onion or with beef) and the noodles are the winners here. Most of the other diners stuck to that, and only a handful ordered the dumplings.

Mandarin Noodle Deli
9537 Las Tunas Drive
Temple City, CA 91780
(626) 309-4318
11am-9:30pm Tuesday through Sunday, Closed on Monday
Cash Only!

By Pauline (see more of her posts).