Today I have another quick bite post, this time from my lunch with Aaron this past Saturday at Chef Liu on Buford Highway. I used to live over near here, and I was also recently nearby at Delicious Kabob, but I have never noticed the small restaurant in the middle of a strip mall parking lot. The restaurant itself is like a glorified shack/sun room. There is a sliding glass door, with two eating areas, each just having a handful of tables. You might not guess there is good food here when driving by.
Aaron has been on a mission to find Xia Long Bao (soup dumplings) since he recently discovered them at Joe’s Shanghai Restaurant in New York, claiming that the mixture of soup and dumpling is the shizz, like whoa. I’ve read about these in Bon Appetit so I was savvy to the dish, and it sounded pretty cool. A rich stock/soup is turn solid using plain jello, then put inside a dumpling and steamed, then when you eat it, you bite the dumpling to pierce the exterior, slurp out the soup, and eat the dumpling. It kind of makes me think of inside out won ton soup. Speaking of which, remember “Inside Out Boy”? Good show.
I have no baseline for comparison, but these Xia Long Bao were pretty tasty. There wasn’t a whole lot of soup, and Aaron said the same thing, but they are definitely worth a try. The dumpling itself was tasty, slightly chewy, with a nice sweet filling.
My favorite was the fried pork dumplings, basically what I know to be a pot sticker. They were served bottom side up, perfectly crispy, not burned at all, and not runny or soggy on top. Little known fact – I could eat pot stickers every day.
Above is a spicy cold noodle salad. I’m not sure of the type of noodle, but they were very doughy and filling. It tasted fresh and was a good side dish, but I couldn’t eat too much of it.
The shoddy picture above is the infamous leek pie. This was fantastic. Clear noodles, egg, leeks, maybe pork?, all fried up with some other fantastic flavors. We wish we had ordered more than one.
We also ordered a won ton soup, which was decent. The broth wasn’t too salty, which I like, and though it had seaweed and cilantro in it, it wasn’t all that flavorful. The actual dumplings in the soup were tasty though. We split all of this food and we definitely did not finish it all. Liu’s is a good value and I recommend heading over that way for a casual snack/meal.
