Kat's 9 Lives

Sorry Tofu, not a good review for this place but I promise there will be some good ones coming up. I am not feeling too peachy, but I wanted to do 2 posts so I had to choose a short one and one that I want to showcase! On Sunday we were down in South Bay and I ate dinner by myself in Cupertino Square. I should have went with something safe, but I wanted to be daring. Ms. Lin recommended HC Dumpling, but with a caution. She only thought it was decent but people rave about it. I don't know what all these people are thinking. The whole time I was eating, I was trying not to vomit. The interior was like any Chinese restaurant and the service was not bad. They were already starting to get super busy by 6:30PM.I ordered the Hu-Chiang Juicy Pork Dumplings, also known as Xiao Long Bao. The meat was gratey and gross. It tastes like the foamy meat gunk that builds up when you eat shabu or hot pot. That's how bad it was! I was about to cry the entire time and I was praying very hard that the rest of my order would be better. Darn my bad nature of ordering too much!! BLECH! When you have something bad first and lower your expectations, the next dish should taste better in comparison. The Pot Stickers with Shrimp & Pork came out and it looked more promising. The skin was tasty and done well, but... the filling was bad as well! I feel like crying when I think back on it. The filling was dry and it just didn't work. It was only slightly better than the XLB mostly due to the skin for the pot sticker.For the main entree I asked the server what she recommended. I guess in retrospect that's a very risky thing to do... She recommended the Wu Xi Pai Gu and I thought that it sounded good because I love spare ribs. Apparently I don't love spare ribs with anything. This wasn't that bad, it just didn't suit my taste. It came out bright red so I thought that it would be like BBQ ribs so that's okay. Sadly it was a bitter Star Anise flavor that just didn't work for me. I know I might sound harsh about the other dishes, but I am just honestly relaying my experience and I can be fair. That's why I am not saying that the spare ribs were bad, but it just wasn't for me.Looking back on the whole thing, I wish I could be mean and send everything back after one taste. All I did was meekly eat the food and hold back the tears, trying to push through as much as I could. If you can't tell already, I am not coming back! I don't even like Ding Tai Feng, but after this place I think it's 10,000X's better! Even the sketchy places in Monterey Park are better and more flavorful than this place here. My advice for those of you out there would be to be strong and send it back. The Asian within me couldn't let the food go to waste so I just worked through it. I have to work on this determination to minimize my suffering.