Fast Food Redefined: Juicy Dumpling Factory in Redondo Beach
by Richard Foss Not long ago there were no restaurants in the Beach Cities serving Chinese dumplings, at least as we think of them now. You could get wontons in soup, and at the Szechuan restaurant in Manhattan Beach they were available boiled and tossed with chili sauce and spinach. The wonton filling was always the same, a mild meatball. Locals who didn’t make forays to Chinatown didn’t know there were other options. Fast forward to now and there are six Beach Cities restaurants that specialize in dumplings, offering them fried, steamed, or boiled, stuffed with meats, seafood, vegetables, and broths. The once obscure item has become commonplace. If you want to know whether locals are embracing this change, look no further than the line outside the Juicy Dumpling Factory, which opened in the former Denny’s and Ayan space by the corner of Aviation and Artesia. They’re nearly always packed, and on a recent evening my brother and I were assigned the 19th place in line. We were in a hurry, so headed elsewhere but neglected to take our name off the waitlist. As we sat down at the alternate restaurant 20 minutes later, I received the text that our table was ready. This illustrates two…
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