If you ask us, drowning in dumplings isn’t a bad way to go.

After the buckets of fun we had opening New Year’s lucky bags last month, all of our Japanese-language staff have been feeling pretty content and ready to sit back and relax until 2025 arrives. However, just recently, our reporter Ahiruneko received a message from a reader requesting that he open a lucky box from a well-known Chinese dim sum restaurant in Yokohama’s Chinatown. Not wanting to disappoint, he immediately looked into placing an order.

The store in question was Daichin Kitchen, the online outlet marketplace for the Daichinro restaurant that was established in 1947 in Chinatown. Located extremely close to Chinatown’s prominent Zenrinmon Gate, this place offers all manner of dim sum and has an especially popular line of chukaman, or Chinese-style steamed buns.

▼ In fact, Ahiruneko looked at a previously featured photo of Zenrinmon Gate on our site…

▼ …and sure enough, there was the sign for Daichinro lit-up in red in the background.

All manner of dim sum and other Chinese snacks, as well as sets of factory seconds for a discounted price, can be ordered on the Daichin Kitchen online marketplace. For this assignment, Ahiruneko selected the small-sized omakase [“leave-it-to-us”] outlet lucky box for 6,000 yen (US$40). This one was supposed to contain products with some manner of factory defect that meant they couldn’t be sold regularly. The box quickly arrived at his doorstep via refrigerated delivery.

The moment Ahiruneko opened the box, he experienced a slight panic attack. He’d read that this particular box was geared towards two people, but it was still packed with wildly more food than he’d expected to receive.

Ahiruneko slowly began to unpack the chukaman, gyoza, shumai, and other items that were almost overflowing from inside. It felt like he had just bought a bulk order of frozen Chinese food at Costco, and he was worried that his fridge wouldn’t even be big enough to hold it all. He decided that the best next thing to do was take stock of everything.

First up were three salt-flavored nikuman (Chinese-style steamed buns with a meat filling). Apparently, Daichinro’s restaurant was the first one in Yokohama’s Chinatown to offer takeout nikuman back in the day, so he had high hopes for these to be quite drool-worthy.

Next were three soy sauce-flavored butaman (steamed buns with a pork filling)…

…followed by a fukahire (shark fin) nikuman and an ebi mayo (shrimp mayonnaise) steamed bun.

The ma lai go (Chinese-styled steamed sponge cake) and anman (steamed bun with an anko filling) looked particularly delectable.

He couldn’t wait to sink his teeth into the soft hanamaki (Mandarin steamed rolls).

It wasn’t the traditional season for eating the azuki butter mooncake, but that wouldn’t stop him from enjoying it.

He then began sorting the various packs of gyoza he received. This one contained basic boiled gyoza.

That was followed by shrimp steamed gyoza and shark fin steamed gyoza as well as shrimp shumai with crab egg topping and a Chinese-style madeleine-like sweet.

Last but not least was a jar of Daichinro’s popular mango pudding.

All in all, there were 18 items in the outlet lucky box. Apparently the contents of this box also change depending on the season and remaining stock of individual items, but Ahiruneko felt that he had scored a decent mix of items. The most important question in his mind at the moment was whether everything would actually fit in his freezer.

Thankfully, after a few minutes of desperately creating some shelf space, he emerged victoriously–but it was definitely cutting it close.

The bags of gyoza and shumai were fine where they were with their relatively smaller size, but Ahiruneko was basically left shoving the steamed buns indiscriminately into any remaining openings he could find. He’d definitely have to eat some of them up quickly or else he wouldn’t be able to buy anything else at the store for a long time.

That said, he promptly began heating up a steamed bun in the microwave. This part was super easy–he could even leave it in its original packaging.

After three minutes at 500 watts, the bun emerged pipping hot and ready to eat.

Its dough was thick and fluffy with generous fillings. It had a gentle flavor, and the cabbage and onions added a pleasant crunch to each bite.

He then proceeded to heat up some gyoza and shumai using the steam function on his microwave. The shrimp shumai with crab egg topping in particular were plump and juicy, and he was able to down them all very quickly.

Eating all of these goodies made him feel like his tongue had been transported to Chinatown.

At the end of the day, Ahiruneko probably could have done with fewer steamed buns and more small dim sum dishes, but the value of the items he received was very good for its price. He was also left wondering what exactly was defective about these factory seconds when they looked and tasted so darn good.

If you now have a craving for nikuman but can’t make it to Yokohama, perhaps this specialty shop in Tokyo’s Chinatown would be easier to access and still satisfy that craving.

Reference: Daichin Kitchen
All images © SoraNews24
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
[ Read in Japanese ]