Peking Restaurant: Chinese Dumplings That Satisfy Cravings

* It’s Sunday, and there are so many crepes and omelets from which to choose. Here’s a sampler of Sunday Brunch destinations in Orange County, culled from recent articles. Other reviews can be accessed at https://https://www.calendarlive.com/go/discover.

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When I have a special craving for a plate of hot Chinese dumplings, the Peking Restaurant in Westminster is just about unbeatable. Longtime chef James Yang passed on his accomplished kitchen to his son, Jerry Chen, and without any disrespect to the old master, I’d say the food here is better than ever. This is a simple, spotlessly clean place decorated with Chinese calligraphy, scroll paintings and several hanging wooden lanterns. Walls are paneled in ribbed wood. Tables are set with white oil cloths and the holy trinity of Chinese dumpling house sauces, soy, vinegar and chile paste.

I haven’t had better dumplings anywhere in this country, and the wide variety served here makes for a surprisingly sumptuous weekend brunch. If you want to start in familiar territory, order kuo tieh, Mandarin for pot stickers. You’ll get 10 crisp, golden canoes, all stuck together in a long row. The outside skins are thin, chewy and crunchy around the edges. Inside, the minced pork and chopped leek filling is so juicy it squirts when you bite in.

Green-onion pancake is a multilayered flat bread also golden and crisp on the surface, a round bread cut into wedges like a pizza. Pull on the upper edge, and layer after layer comes apart in your hand, each one flecked with chopped green onion.

These, it should be pointed out, are just for starters. Two of the heavyweights are roast beef with sesame cake and special shrimp egg rolls. The first is sort of a Chinese roast beef sandwich, something close to the Armenian-style aram sandwiches made by rolling lavash bread around a piquant filling.

The egg rolls border on the miraculous. Each piece has a crunchy skin and a filling that is almost entirely fresh shrimp and dried bean curd, with a bit of cilantro thrown in for complexity.

Peking Restaurant, 8566 Westminster Ave., Westminster. (714) 893-3020. The restaurant is open 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Dumplings are $3.50 to $4.85.