Omakase Restaurant Group’s Dumpling Time will open its fourth location on January 5, 2022, in San Jose’s Santana Row, the hospitality company announced in a press release.
Like its sister restaurants in San Francisco, Dumpling Time (11 Division Street), Dumpling Time Express (55 Division Street), and Dumpling Time Thrive City (191 Warriors Way), Dumpling Time Santana Row will “capture the joy of Asian dumpling traditions as imagined through a California lens.”
The menu will center around handmade dim sum inspired by Chinese traditions and made with local California ingredients. Dumplings will be filling-forward and handmade with premium products with an emphasis on flavor. Guests will find fan-favorite items from the San Francisco locations on the Santana Row menu such as the crispy Seafood, Pork or Chicken Gyoza; pan-seared Chicken, or Pork Bao; Shrimp Har Gow; and Xi’an Dumplings made from owner Kash Feng’s family recipe.
Dumpling Time Santana Row will offer exclusive menu items that promise to deliver novel flavor. For customers seeking allergen-friendly foods, a generous selection of vegetarian dishes will allow for expanded choices for all diners.
Dumpling Time Santana Row will offer a full bar with cocktails in addition to beer and wine. The beverage program will emphasize sake, vodka, and gin. The Rising Sun, a melange of bourbon, turbinado sugar, Chinese five-spice, and bitters; as well as the Cálido y Picante an elevated mixture of tequila, mezcal, Asian pear, chili pepper, and lemon just two of the cocktails created to enhance Dumpling Time’s culinary offerings. Other cocktails exclusive to Dumpling Time Santana Row will also be available. Non-alcoholic beverages will include an extensive tea selection ranging from light, fragrant Chrysanthemum Buds to the richer flavors of Da Hong Pao Oolong with its notes of plum and red dates.
Omakase Restaurant’s design team, helmed by Aya Yanagisawa, has transformed the Santana Row location, formerly home to the Village California Bistro & Wine Bar.
The interior boasts a glass-walled dumpling room that will offer the opportunity to observe dumplings being made by hand. Additional glass elements, namely ribbed glass dividers between booths, will create intimacy for guests while offering a stylish way to ensure their safety in light of COVID-19. Elsewhere in the restaurant, the design team emphasized the indoor/outdoor flow of the space through the use of French doors for easy access to the generous patio area that will have seating for 60. Rounding out the space is a mural by Tricia Choi.
This opening marks Dumpling Time’s fourth California location and the first in the South Bay.
