Mama Lu’s Dumpling House

Growing from humble beginnings as a cottage food operator selling wontons and dumplings from a San Gabriel Valley home into a popular chain of Chinese restaurants, Mama Lu’s Dumpling House has had its ups and downs over the years – infamously including jail time for the original owners due to a tax evasion scheme. But unlike similarly tax-troubled Chinese chain Sam Woo, which closed locations and exited Orange County in 2021, Mama Lu’s survived and expanded, adding its first OC location in 2023.

All but hidden inside Rivera Food Service, a commercial supermarket in a Tustin plaza near Usuki Japanese Cuisine, FOB Fish Grill, and Thai Chaiyo, the OC location of Mama Lu’s is hard to spot from outside. Walk through Rivera’s doors and you’ll find it in a cavernous, boxy space off to the right, immediately next to Tustin’s location of Taiwanese dessert specialist Meet Fresh. Decorated with just enough Chinese decor to distract guests from looking at the warehouse-like market next door, the restaurants collectively offer seating for around 100 people, including generously spaced tables, benches, and chairs. The only unusual part of the environment on our visit was the sound of religious music and talk radio playing through the restaurant’s speakers – continuously loud and distracting during our meal.

Mama Lu’s menus include one page with 16 dim sum options ($7.50 each, available until 5 PM every day), a collection of 13 lunch specials ($17 each, available on weekdays until 5 PM) on the back, and a separate list of typical northern Chinese/Taiwanese-style dishes on a two-sided, table mat-sized menu card. The list begins with dumplings and related dishes ($8.50 to $16.50), continues with soups, noodles and fried rice dishes ($15 to $21), drinks ($2.50 to $8.50), meats, seafood, and vegetable entrees ($18 to $23.50), and two desserts ($8 to $10). As a general statement, portion sizes are generous, despite the fact that base prices are typically higher than what people were paying five years ago for the same items.

We tried a handful of dishes to sample as many categories as we could on our first visit. From the dim sum menu, we picked and really enjoyed the deep fried meat dumplings ($7.50/3), glutinous rice footballs with a minced pork and vegetable filling, which were a little thicker and shell than typical, but fun to eat because of their crispy outer shells, sweet soft rice frames, and meaty centers. Based on recommendations, we skipped both Mama Lu’s har gow and once-famous xiaolongbao soup dumplings, which appear to have been prepared and sourced elsewhere, and instead ordered spicy wontons ($16.48/10) from the dumpling menu. Each was mouth-fillingly huge but surprisingly muted in flavor, despite sitting in a small pool of ostensibly spicy chili vinegar sauce, and being paired with plenty of cilantro and slippery peanuts. While filling, we wouldn’t feel any need to order the wontons again.