King’s Dumpling

Overall is a good convenient place to enjoy lunch or dinner after shopping or before a movie. Good appetizer dishes-​tasty, noodles are good as well. Don’t expect much from the service staff, they are just food deliverers. Casual décor, great for meals with a bunch of friends or just 2. Price is moderate, less then most of the Korean restaurants or Japanese restaurant within the same building.

If this review was based only on their namesake, the 金牌小籠包, I’d have given them only 3 stars, But lucky for them, I am grading them on everything I’ve tried over there, and on the strength of their beef noodles soup alone, that bumps them up to a solid 3.6 stars, which rounds up to 4 stars.
My mom has talked about this place a lot and she met an old acquaintance/​famous movie star DICK LONG (of John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow 1 and 2 fame) there while dining with my uncle and grandma. My sister had recently arrived from Los Angeles and they had stopped by there after a hard day of shopping. It was supposed to be a relatively short trip for me to join them but it took me much longer to get there than anticipated because of the road closures due to it being Christmas Eve and Tsim Sha Tsui was apparently the IT PLACE to be during festive days.
Long story short, I was FUCKED by the bus driver who reassured me that despite road closures and the bus being rerouted, it will still stop by the front of the Yue Hua Chinese department store, when in fact it was diverted to somewhere way west near Elements, and we were kicked off the bus and forced to pay the fare again and wait another 10 to 15 min before the bus restarts and make the way back east to Yue Hua. I ended up WALKING all the way from there to The One (the mall where King’s is located at). KMB gets a ZERO star for such bullshit business practice.
Needless to say, I was near death due to exhaustion after braving the endless hoards of X’mas revelers and trekking all the way to the restaurant. Fortunately most of the food was still lukewarm and I managed to wolf down the meal before I croaked there on the spot.
I can not lie, I prefer the XLB (Xiao Long Bao 小籠包) at Shanghai Po Po, the skin is thinner there and it also had a little more «soup» inside the bun. But it is still pretty good and better than the average XLB you get in most places, better than some authentic Shanghai restaurants even. The meat filling has a nice flavour, but it could also be a little bit bigger.
The best dish they offer is the beef noodle soup, the sliced beef is EXTREMELY tender and the soup flavourful with just the right amount of spiciness to add a little kick. The noodles had a very nice texture though I prefer some of the hand cut and homemade noodles found in Los Angeles. But then again you won’t find those thicker noodles at any Shanghainese restaurants and that is an unfair comparison. I finished everything in that bowl and had the urge to lick the bowl clean, though I didn’t because it would have incurred the wrath of MOM and resulted in divine retribution.
The wonton soup was also not as good as Shanghai Po Po, the filling had too much veggie and not enough meat for my taste. The soup wasn’t MSG laden but I really prefer our home made wonton soup without the egg strips and seaweed slices, which I guess is something that is from the Taiwanese tradition.
The shrimp fried rice was pretty meh, I am glad my sister finished most of the shrimp for me. I don’t like big shrimps.

King’s Dumpling located inside The One which is really convenient to come by for a quick bite after shopping in the area.
We were here for a late afternoon snack and the place was empty. And or course we ended up sharing their 金牌小籠包. 金牌小籠 claims that their 金牌小籠包 has over 19 folds which I forgot to count!
What’s the verdict?!
They were not the best I had but I think they were really good. I like how the skin wrapping was thin enough but not too thin so the dumpling would burst when I tried to pick them up with my chopsticks.
The restaurant itself is clean and spacious. I definitely don’t mind coming back to try out other items!