Another new restaurant opened recently in downtown Lakewood's Belmar neighborhood. Mason's Dumpling Shop serves handmade boiled, steamed and pan-fried dumplings. The owners are restaurateurs from Los Angeles and the Belmar Mason's is their third Colorado location.
Now, I wouldn't call myself a dumpling expert, but I have eaten a lot of dumplings over the years, including at restaurants that are often hyped as the best of the best--specifically, Din Tai Fung and Goubuli Dumpling--so I was excited to try Mason's.
Din Tai Fung is a Taiwan-based chain that makes some of the best soup dumplings you can get. When you walk into their Seattle location, you walk past a glass window showing the kitchen crew hard at work rolling out and filling an enormous number of dumplings. The amount of dumplings that location makes in a day must be incredible, and it shows in the amazing freshness of the dumplings they serve. The dumplings I ate there were about as perfect as any I've ever eaten.
Meanwhile, dumpling aficionados know Goubuli Dumpling (ηδΈηε ) is a restaurant in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin that is world-famous for its dumplings and buns. Rather like Din Tai Fung, Goubuli Dumpling serves their signature dish in astonishing quantities, and their sprawling, labyrinthine location is always packed. I'm sure there are debates about whether Goubuli Dumpling is too touristy, but I found their dumplings tasty and absolutely perfectly-prepared.
What do I consider tasty? Basically, I like dumplings when they're served hot and evenly cooked--not too doughy but also not too chewy (or crispy, if pan-fried). Cooking dumplings like that is something I suspect takes a lot of practice, because over the years I've had a lot of dumplings that were pretty mediocre, even at otherwise really top-notch restaurants. These places didn't specialize in dumplings, and it showed.
On the day I went to Mason's, they were advertising that they were in a "soft opening" and still working to get everything just right.
As we went in, I was impressed with the remodel of the location from its previous incarnation as a seafood-slash-sports bar (Seafood Empire), and I was glad to see the annoying big screen TVs gone. (I hate restaurants with televisions in them, but that's another story). Mason's isn't fancy, but it's clean and comfortable. Vibe-wise, it reminds me of a typical dumpling house you might wander into in Los Angeles' Monterey Park neighborhood. (Side note: if you're ever in Monterey Park, Mama Lu's Dumpling House is worth the long lines.)
At Mason's, we ordered six or seven dishes off the menu. First up were the pan-fried pork dumplings, and I was blown away at how perfectly they were cooked. Really, they were that outstanding. They were so good that we immediately ordered a second plate. Unfortunately, the dumplings in that second round were alternately too doughy on one side and too crisp on the other. The cook, it was clear, had rushed the second order and not paid enough attention to getting them just right.
Next we tried the soup dumplings. I find these way too doughy at places like Star Kitchen (really, they just never seem to get them the way I like them), so I was pleased to find Mason's soup dumplings cooked perfectly. To round things out, we ordered the pan fried beef, cheese and onion dumplings and several steamed buns--the stewed Angus beef and stewed pork belly. These were well-received by my party, with the light fluffiness of the buns and the savory stewed beef as the standouts.
Overall, it was a fun, tasty meal and I absolutely recommend you go by and try the place. Certainly I'll be back again to see how things have progressed once they're fully open. If they can make every order of pan-fried pork dumplings as good as that first plate we received, Mason's Dumpling House is going to be a hit.
