Dough Zone

 

Dough Zone is a popular Chinese restaurant that specializes in dumplings, baozi, and other dough related Chinese dishes.  It is a successful chain restaurant brand that has locations in many different states.  Dough Zone established its first Oregon location at Portland Downtown near the water front and has since then being very popular among the locals.  Year later, it has opened its second Oregon location at Beaverton.

We have never tried Dough Zone before and it was our first time dining at this place.  Our expectation was high and was going to compare it with what Din Tai Fung offers.

We got to Dough Zone around 12:30PM and it wasn't very busy.  The restaurant was about half full.  The restaurant had large windows at all sides and the natural sun light made the customers feel more comfortable sitting in there.  As we sat down, we were offered mashed ginger and hot sauce.

There was an order sheet but there wasn't a physical menu.  There was a QR code for customers to scan to see the menu on the phone.  We ordered Beef Pancake Roll, Jianbing Guo Zi, Pot Stickers, Pork Wonton with Hot Sauce, Shrimp Dumpling, Vegetable Dumpling, and Pork Dumpling.

Beef Pancake Roll was delivered to our table first.  It was cut into 2 pieces.  We felt that the beef was a bit dry and not enough sauce.  It was not as good as what we were expecting.  The Pork Wonton with Hot Sauce had 6 pieces of Wonton in the bowl.  This was less than what Din Tai Fung offered.  The taste of the sauce was not very strong and not spicy enough.

We then got the Pork Dumpling.  This dumpling dish was boiled not steamed.  There were also 6 pieces in a serving.  The pork inside the dumpling was good but the dumpling skin was quite thick.  The Shrimp Dumpling was interesting as it has a large piece of shrimp in there and the tail was actually outside of the dumpling.  The taste was good but again the dumpling skin was thick.  The Vegetable Dumpling was quite different than what Din Tai Fung had.  The Vegetable Dumpling had tofu, carrot and other stuff in it.  We liked the taste quite a lot.

The pot sticker was not bad in our opinion, just not presented very well in the dish.  The best dish was Jianbing Guo Zi.  It was cut into 4 large pieces.  It was crunching and had a lot of taste in it.  The egg was wrapped around the pancake.  This was the dish we enjoyed the most.

Overall, Dough Zone was a lot cheaper than what Din Tai Fung charges, but also gave smaller portions per dish.  In terms of taste, some dishes were decent but some were below our expectation, such as the dumplings.  We would probably visit it again but may not order dumplings next time.