Sorry , I did not photograph the excellent soup dumplings. We got takeout but was informed that the resturant was hopping at 8pm on a Monday. read more

Ugly Dumpling - Chicken fried rice with chicken broccoli, not pictured strung beans with garlic sauce - Chinese Near Me - Hamden, Connecticut

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Lychee martini sweet and smooth. 6 light Rangoon in appetizer, should be 8 due to small size. Kung Pao chicken is a large chopped portion of chicken, peppers, tomato, zucchini, onions, peanuts. No hot pepper identifier on menu but has a pepper spice that's medium to hot. Generous side portion added- 1-1/2 cup bowl white rice. 2nd meal: green tea noodles, scallions in a brown peanut sauce and added sliced, boiled chicken breast pieces. Mild tangy spice bite. Noodles have a whole wheat texture but taste mild and not like a green tea beverage. Dining partner served way ahead of my dish. Kind server later identified policy is to serve dishes when ready. Service quick for beverages and ordering. Menus à la cate style. Happy hour til 6pm. Located in old TGIF building. Abundant parking. Bar available. read more

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What a disaster! I ordered dinner (two noodle dished and two dumplings) for pickup within 30 minutes. Spouse arrived in about 30 minutes. Using the "track order" link in my text it showed that my order was ready for pickup. Spouse waited for 30 minutes and spoke with staff twice who told him they'd check in the food but never gave him an update. We had hungry children at home so spouse left, picked up McDonald's for kids, dropped it off at home and returned to restaurant. He inquired again about our order and manager gave him the order. Luckily he checked the bag and there were no main dishes, just the two sides. Manager told him they ran out of our food and couldn't provide a refund. Said we needed to request a refund through the website. (Website does not offer that feature -- just instructs you to call the restaurant. One fellow customer in the restaurant called his wife and told her to request the refund. She called the restaurant WHILE HER SPOUSE was there and they hung up on her!) Instead they gave us two additional side dishes. So 1.5 hour wait for so-so appetizers. Was the food good? I guess so. Worth the wait and hassle and terrible customer service? Absolutely not. read more

This is some time coming. The Ugly Dumpling on Dixwell Avenue in Hamden, CT is a quietly upscale restaurant specialing in Asian food with a strong lean to szeechuan inspired Chinese cuisine. The food is made right in front of the customers in a bay windowed room called the Bao Lab. The lab is spotless and sterile while the specialists turn out everything from soup dumplings to pork buns. The decor is spotless, done in the quaint and sophisticated wood setting of the chinese Era. It has a notably younger crowd and the food is perfect in taste, proportion and presentation. The bar staff: Nayarr, Katie, Annisah and Samantha are NYC level and young, fun and life of the party: deft and perfect in their delivery and product. The manager Lindsay quietly and deftly makes sure everything moves smoothly and effortless, Nayarr creates a new drink every week: try the Gentleman in CT before dinner and the Chocolate After Dark after dinner. This is the ONLY place you'll find these drink masterpieces. This restaurant will allow you to meet and get to know other regulars. The hail-fellows-well-met atmosphere only adds to the over enjoyment which accompanies the excellent food and service. Ugly Dumpling is the set piece of the Hamden, Meriden, Middleton area. And yes I'm here - every Friday evening. read more

Fairly long wait for a table and service for a Tuesday evening, but the service itself was very good. Friendly courteous attention. Didn't get to try the orange chicken as they were out but the soup dumplings were very good. The broccoli with garlic was great as well. Rangoons and pork buns were not a favorite at our table. Overall, nice ambience and a good dinner especially when ordering what they are known for. Service times will likely improve as they work out the kinks. read more

How much needed addition of Asian food to the CT scene. We had the edamame broccoli noodles, fried rice, and of course, the soup dumplings. The pan fried dumplings were so so. The service is fast, the servers are well informed of the menu and will explain and suggest really good stuff. It's very interesting to see the soup dumpling being made. read more

Hubby and I live pretty close by and have been wanting to try this place for awhile. We came on a Monday night and were able to get seated right away, which was nice. The restaurant is beautiful, and it's hands down the best thing about this place. Service was good, but overall the food was mediocre at best. Here's our review: Ugly Bao Buns: Feels like a signature item on the menu, considering the whole "Bao Lab" display in the restaurant but the orange chicken was dry and was weirdly the last thing to come out.... Apps usually come out first. Not sure if it was forgotten about but it was warm-ish and just didn't knock our socks off. The Bao Buns at Mecha in New Haven are still the best around in our opinion. No competition. Crab Rangoon: These def gave us the impression that they were boxed, frozen, and heated up to serve. Absolutely nothing special. The sauce that came with them was also regular-schmegular. Chicken Wonton Soup: This was hands down the best thing we had. I was feeling a little under the weather, and this chicken wonton soup hit the spot and brought me back to life. It was tasty and the portion size was perfect. 5/5 stars! Orange Chicken: The orange chicken came out first, which was weird because we hadn't gotten our apps yet. Nonetheless, it's literally just a mini-mountain of dry orange chicken on a white plate with a side bowl of white rice. My husband called it sub-par, and felt like it was yet another item that was probably boxed and heated up in a microwave. Not an exciting meal by any means. Overall, our bill was $42 which wasn't bad for a random Monday night out. The ambiance was nice, and our server, CJ, was very pleasant and knowledgeable about the menu. I think this place has the potential to be incredible but it's not going to get there with this KC-101 music and oddly timed, microwaved meals. read more

Took over 2 hour to get seated and then it took more than an hour for our whole table to get food. Other customers came in, ate, and left before we got our food. read more

I wasn't impressed the food was not good at all and the menu it is very limited. The service was ok but not knowledgeable enough and the recomendación for the food wasn't accurate. read more

You guys have to stop running out of food items at 5:00!!!! No Hot and Sour Soup, no Noodles Cmon!!! Get it together, you wanted busy well you got it...for now.Maybe better luck at Lunchtime. read more

Was so excited to try this place and unfortunately it did not live up to the hype. Our service was terrible. We went on a Tuesday night and the restaurant wasn't busy but our server was struggling to clean almost every table in her section. Our food arrived before my drink, none of the food was hot, my husband never received the side of rice he ordered. The food was good but the service really ruined this experience. read more

Ugly Dumpling - Mongolian beef, dumpling sampler, spicy noodles - Chinese Near Me - Hamden, Connecticut

4-Star Review Ugly Dumpling has a lot going for it -- the drinks are absolutely phenomenal and the soup dumplings are truly delicious, definitely a standout. The atmosphere is nice and the concept is great. Some of the other menu items can be a bit inconsistent, though, which keeps it from being a full 5-star experience for me. Still, when they hit, they hit, and it's worth a visit just for the drinks and soup dumplings alone. Will be back to give some of the other dishes another try! read more

Went for lunch today and the food was delicious! Prices were very reasonable and we had left overs! No wait times and the staff was amazing! Shout out to Owen who talked to us a lot about the restaurant and answered all our questions! Highly recommend and can't wait to go again! read more

Clean place from the door to the bathroom. I would definitely recommend this place. Great food, drinks and awesome service from our server Gabby! read more

Great addition to Hamden! Excellent service and reasonable prices. It's not quite Din Tai Fung quality, but sure is nice to have good local soup dumplings! read more

customer service was terrible, food was nasty, waiters was talking about me, wasn't a good experience. only one waiter was actually pushing to get our food to us read more

LOL the food was so bad. We went as a party of 3 for lunch for my brother's bday. Here's what we ordered: -Soup dumpling sampler: 3.5/5- tasted okay, has flavor though not enough juice/broth in center. -Crystal shrimp dumplings: 0/5: these were the most tasteless rancid shrimp dumplings I've ever had in my life- if you ever had crystal shrimp dumplings from dim sum spots in Ctown, NYC you will be hugely disappointed -Spicy pork and shrimp wonton: 4/5, probably the best bite of the day -Vegan Dumplings: 0/5; just as a bad as the shrimp dumplings -Green tea noodles with spicy sauce: 2/5; does not taste like green tea at all. Not sure why they called it that, maybe bc it's green. The noodles tasted really al dente and undercooked -Noodles w/ spicy sauce: 0/5; we ordered this the same time as the green tea noodles so tell me why we waited an extra ~20 minutes for it (we were long done eating the rest of the food). Ended up getting it to go but brother's comment was "whats so hard about boiling noodles and putting it over sauce" **The stars were given for ambiance, place was trendy. Bathroom was clean/nice- has a Dyson hand dryer. Oh and they also provide free mouthwash w/ disposable cups! Probably to rinse away how awful the food tasted. read more

I was very excited to try ugly dumpling but it did not meet expectations at all. Service was meh at best. Water came out AFTER the food was at the table. Crab rangoons came out cold, everything else was lukewarm at best. Beef was extremely rubbery. I've had better dumplings from a bag. Please skip this place, overpriced terrible food. Wish I could've gotten my money back for almost inedible food and terrible service. read more

The food was absolutely horrid. The cream cheese rangoons came out cold, as did our soup dumplings. Service was mid as hell, we barely saw our server and the drinks came out after two of our items. Extremely disappointing considering the hype. Please save yourself the trip and money. read more

We've been here three times so far. Great vibe and very friendly servers! Unfortunately, the quality of the food has declined. The pork in shumai was smelly, and the skin for the soup dumpling got thicker. read more

The bar was busy and service was chaotic to say the least. Manager was bartending and barking orders. I asked to move to a table and manager told me I had to wait in line again and it was a 25 minute wait. Although food was good, I wouldn't recommend going during Happy Hour, even if you're the only person sitting at the bar. read more

Great vegetarian options! The green tea noodles with the seseme sauce and the spicy vegan wontons were phenomenal. Very clean and modern spot with lots of parking read more

Food was delicious. Service less than impressive. Asked twice for water never did get it. No offer even of a refill on tea. Then was charged for a drink we didn't get. They did correct that but we will not be coming back. read more

We got takeout from the Hamden location and we didn't have to wait long at all for our order. The food was fresh, hot, and delicious. Will likely be back soon! read more

Honestly wanted to like this place its new and fun. Food was ok but we masked by the terrible service, slow service and just sucked overall. My daughter waited over 20 mins for steamed noodles which never came out. They offered us white rice. They never brought me a plate and took 10 mins for water. It's a pretty terrible place. Maybe takeout is better but don't hold your breath read more

Drink orders were delayed because two people in our party ordered margaritas and they were out of tequila. Reordered new drinks but they never came so we cancelled drinks. One appetizer arrived after entrees were served cancelled second appetizer which never came. Waiter apologetic but clearly overwhelmed. Entrees came out separately not together. Generally very disappointing overall. Food was cold and mediocre. Would not recommend read more

I wish I can rate the service higher than 5/5 but there are no more stars to fill in. Our server (CJ) gave great service and opened up to us about his life and the restaurant. Food was also fantastic. We ordered 7 things and everything came out in less than 10 minutes. For the taste, everything tasted authentic and the flavor was amazing. A great environment and lights weren't too bright nor too dim. Overall 10/10 experience for this restaurant definitely would recommend to eat here. As a first time visitor, I wI'll come back soon read more

We went for dinner last night and everything was amazing! It was about a 45 minute wait at 6:30pm on a Friday, not bad for somewhere that just opened a week ago and there's lots around to shop while we waited. The staff was super friendly and knowledgeable about the menu, everything was delicious! My favorite was the truffle and pork soup dumplings. We will be back soon! read more

Amazing. The food was delicious, the design of the building is nice, and the staff very friendly. Clean, out of this world good, simply one of the best Asian food restaurants in CT. read more

i think my server had a disability or something idk there were mad empty tables and we somehow got the food before drinks