The place was very clean and the staff very helpful. The young man whom I took to be the owner, or at very least the manager, was friendly and offered to go over the menu with me. He was thorough and informative. They also had an extensive tea list that was fairly impressive.
I settled on a combo meal that gave me four dumplings, any noodle dish and a medium drink for $7.19. I then added four dumplings (two pork & mushroom, one pork and celery and one pork and napa.) and a six piece shrimp shu-mai.
The dumplings.
Mmmmmmmmm. The leek was particularly good.
Shrimp shu-mai.
While I waited for my food to steam I sampled the BBQ pork-stuffed bao.
BBQ noodles
The dumplings were quite good but I was a little disappointed that steaming was the only option. I like my gyoza pan fried personally and the two are essentially the same thing. Tasty, though! The noodles were kind of bland and by the time I got to them they were stuck together as a mass and had to be cut apart. As to the shu-mai, I've had better but I've certainly had worse. The China-Wuyuan-Jasmine was light and had a sweetness I couldn't quite identify. The pork bao was very nice and felt like comfort food. Lunch ran me around $12.00 which is a very expensive lunch for me. Even though the portions seemed small I walked away satisfied.
I see they serve shiow leong bow (xiao long bao) which I'm told is a dumpling with a soup-filled center. This sounds neat!
I'm not sold on Taiwanese yet. Owing to a dearth of competition I'll have to take this as representative for now. Give it a shot and tell me what you think.