Little Dumpling

My boyfriend and I love this place!
We had Chicha Morada (sweet purple corn drink), papa la huancaina (boiled potatoes covered in creamy and spicy huancaina sauce), seco (delicious beef and cilantro stew with rice) and lomo saltado (sauteed strip of sirloin, tomatoes, onions, fries and rice).
I’ve grown up eating Peruvian food and think this place serves as a great substitution for the real deal (parents and grandma don’t live here!) We usually get good service and the food has been consistently good. Honestly, I’m happy to see the improvements from the new owners and look forward to try the food when the new chef starts… exciting because we’ve already tried the new chef’s food from an over-​priced restaurant in San Diego and sad because we’ll be going back home soon.
This place is definitely worth a try because you get a great meal at an affordable price.

Food was pleasantly good.

Got to experience this fabulous place the other day. It was around 3:30pm (the odd not lunch yet not dinner time) so we were the only ones in there. The waitress was super nice and very friendly. The Papas a la Huancaina are fantastic ad I found myself not wanting to stop eating them, the Seco was to-​die-​for. IT’s slow cooked beef (fall apart) in a broth/​sauce and served with white rice and beans. My friend had the chicken fried rice off the chinese menu and even that was delicious. Sure, it’s $ 10 for a plate, but I got TWO very healthy servings out of it. I ate myself silly and then brought home enough leftovers to eat just as big of a portion the next day. I don’t care about the décor, nor what it looks like. It was clean and the food was delicious, that’s all I care about. So, good job Little Dumpling, I’m definitely going there again before I leave in a few days. And I may perhaps beg for your Seco recipe.

I was cold calling for my job and I saw someone eating this dish that looked awesome. It was lunchtime and I said what the heck and decided to order. I ordered the lomo saltado and it will be a staple of mine for years to come. Great place to eat anytime.

One day I had a crazy day at work where I had worked like 31 hours in one day. My mom so happens to call me to ask me if I want to get food with her, and I said I’m too tired to move. She says, well, I’ll pick you up and we’ll go to this Peruvian place. Off we go, as my admittedly tired self tries to make small talk. We end up here, at Little Dumpling. The place was mostly empty… a party of four was leaving there table, and another table had clearly just been left, too. Or was it???
So we sit down to wait for our menus and drink orders. A kid comes up and says he’ll be right with us and heads into the back of the restaurant, into the kitchen area. Great. So we wait. And wait. And wait some more. He emerges with our menus like ten minutes later and asks what we’ll drink. Inca Kola, of course. Then he takes our orders, as we had plenty of time to decide what we wanted while we waited.
We finally get our food, and it was pretty good. Nothing amazing, but it wasn’t as poor as my mood. My parents were not too happy with their food, though I was. But we all agreed that the portions were generous, and a pretty good deal. My parents would have rated this place four stars on value alone, though I give it three: yes, it was a value, but so is a $.89 cheeseburger… but that’s not why we came here!
During the hour or so we were here, the other two tables were never cleared. They sat there the whole time, while the kid who served our food chilled in the kitchen. Another family walked in as we were walking out, and they seemed to know the kid who worked there. They asked about his sister or his mom or something, and he seemed happy to see them. I bet they didn’t wait ten minutes for a menu…

It was long ago, and far away, when I first tried Chifa (read: Chinese-​Peruvian food). Then, it was prepared by a loving mother of one of my closest girls and we couldn’t wait to go over to her house when we knew her mom was making some of her famous food.
Flash-​forward to Peru, where I had a chance to go to authentic Chifa restos and enjoy this culinary blend of two otherwise different cultures. In one word: Yum!
So, when I found Little Dumpling prided itself on its Chifa in Las Vegas, I couldn’t wait to try it! The Aguado de Camarones (a cilantro based soup with loads of goodies); the Papas a la Huancaina (potatoes with an egg/​cheese sauce smothered on top — to add a spicy kick, try these folks’ homemade spicy cilantro sauce); and the steamed fish were excellent. Not so great: the seafood fried rice (the seafood in the rice was deep-​fried so that this dish tasted heavy and very oily). All in all, an excellent meal in a cozy, no frills environment. And, yes, they serve Inka Cola. Love it.

Good peruvian not like mi peru

Literally one of the best meals I have ever had.
Imagine this: 4 p.m. local time, family of four has just arrived in town from East Coast. Husband, wife, and two jet-​lagged little kids are looking for somewhere, anywhere to eat an early dinner while driving through the suburban hell that is outer Vegas. Seriously, there’s got to be a good place to eat, but who can tell where to find it among the non-​descript strip malls and chain restaurants? Chinese is usually reliable, right? Okay, so let’s stop at this Little Dumpling place.
Pull into especially dingy-​looking shopping strip. Husband notices that this is actually Peruvian-​Chinese fusion, not just regular Chinese. He takes the gamble and says the place is probably good. Wife is too sleep-​deprived and hungry to put up a fight. Looking back, is she ever glad that she let herself get talked into this place.
Apparently, there was a Chinese population that ended up in Peru sometime after WWII, and as happens pretty much anywhere Chinese people immigrate, they created a fusion cuisine. As we have «American Chinese,» the Peruvians have «Peruvian Chinese.» American Chinese isn’t authentic Chinese, but it can be very, very good, so I was open-​minded.
We started with an order of Yuca a la Huancaina, fried strips of yucca (cassava) topped in a very slightly spicy bright-​yellow sauce. The host/waiter/owner’s son told me that the sauce was made with peppers and was dairy based, but I’m pretty sure it’s also got egg yolks in it. Either way, it’s absolutely heavenly.
We also ordered the Tallarin Chino, or Chinese noodles, topped with vegetables (these are usually made with meat, but they accommodated us). They’re served with a gingery, garlicky black bean sauce and taste much like mei fun or lo mein or those squiggly thin egg noodles that you sometimes get in Thai restaurants. We also ordered Pescado a lo Macho, which is supposed to be very spicy, but which they made mild for us. It’s a crispy-​fried fillet of bass that is served with a tomato-​pepper sauce thickened with cornstarch. Also delicious.
Loved the place so much that we went back a week and a half later, just as we were ready to leave town. I especially love their desserts. The best was the alfajores, sandwiched butter cookies with a dulce de leche filling.
Also, the Chicha Morada is not to be missed. It’s traditional Peruvian style punch, made with blue corn, pineapple juice, lime juice, and a few other ingredients and is delicious and refreshing. I believe the traditional way to make this drink is alcoholic, but this version is not.

Small little hidden place, but worth a try.
When i visited Peru, i was amazed how many Chinese restaurants there were. After returning to the States, I really missed it because it had a different flavor than the Chinese food i was use to. Well Little Dumpling Chinese/​Peruvian has really good Chinese food, and their Peruvian Food awesome as well. Definitely worth a try.

I had never had Peruvian food before going to eat in this small joint. The decorations are pretty sparse but interesting. It’s also interesting that they serve Chinese and Peruvian food. I don’t know much about Peruvian food but I had a dish with meat, gravy, French fries and rice all on one plate. My wife and I have eaten here twice and enjoyed it both times.

This place is a hole in the wall… but aren’t all the best ones???
When I lived in Vegas, this was the ONLY authentic Peruvian restaurant. Their lomo saltado is delicious! I’ve had their jalea, aji de gallina, chaufa… almost all the items and their portions are generous. The alfajores and the lucuma ice cream are simply a little piece of heaven!

This place could be great, really. Unfortunately the place as rather unattractive, the décor was sparse and forgettable, the only sounds were the people talking and the annoying television, and the waitress was shy, not very talkative, and wasn’t great at helping you decide what to get.
The menu is rough-​looking, has nothing to describe the food at all, and doesn’t really appeal to a first-​timer for Peruvian food. It lacks the polish of a good restaurant, really.
The food, you ask? Decent. The food on the menu is just a bunch of names, and how those names relate to the food at all is a mystery to the uninformed, so you have to ask your server. As I stated earlier, the server has not forthcoming with explanations, so you had to just pick whatever you thought sounded nice. The Chinese is lackluster and in fact a little more pricey than other Chinese-​only places. Don’t come here for that. The Peruvian food has more character, but even so, it’s so hit-​or-​miss that it’s not even worth the time and effort.
Suggestions for improvement? They need to put a bit more capital into the décor, take the TV out of there, lower the amount of light and get indirect lighting. Drop the Chinese completely, and change the name to an exotic, Peruvian-​sounding name. Play to your uniqueness, and you’ll get much better attention. If you feel you must have Chinese food there, due to Chinese immigrant influence on Peru’s cuisine, then add it as «Asian-​Influenced» or something to the otherwise Peruvian menu. Add some photos of the dishes, as well as a description for each and every item. For a non-​Spanish speaker, the food on the menu might as well have been gibberish.
This could’ve been great, but as it stands, it’s kind of dismal and not worth your time.

The BF drove by Little Dumpling and was pleasantly surprised to see a restaurant advertising Peruvian food. After our little jaunt to Peru a couple of months ago, we wanted to see what Little Dumpling had to offer!
Little Dumpling serves two types of food — Chinese and Peruvian. You’ll find two separate menus, so it’s really two restaurants in one. And you’ll definitely notice the Chinese influenced Peruvian food since there’s a decent amount of Chinese immigrants in Peru.
Going for the staple, the BF ordered the Lomo Saltado ($ 9.95). I decided to be a bit adventurous and went for their Cau Cau de Pollo ($ 9.00), which seemed like chicken in yellow curry. The BF liked their Lomo Saltado because the french fries were still crispy and it tasted pretty good. My chicken dish was pretty basic, and I was dumping a lot of their green sauce on there. Both are generous orders and a bit pricey, in my opinion. The BF asked if they served quinoa, but the waiter looked at us like he didn’t know what we were talking about. Oh well. I figure we better not ask if they serve cuy or alpaca either then!
The cool thing is that they serve Inca Cola! It comes in cans though, but will bring you straight back to Peru when you get a taste of this sweet yellow stuff.
Service is pretty slow. It was a weekday around dinner time. They had one customer finishing up and had a few people come in for to go orders. We had to ask the waiter a couple of times for a take out box for our leftovers, and it took him awhile to get these. (We were in rush ‘cuz I had a flight to catch!)
Overall, it satisfied our curiosity about what Little Dumpling was serving up. Their Peruvian menu isn’t in English, so good luck with that. Maybe their ceviche might be worth checking out?
(Pics of our beef and chicken dishes are posted on their business profile!)

We found this place off the LV local rag. What was interesting was the fact that this place served Peruvian AND Chinese food. I got a real kick out of that, but truly, I was not there for Chinese.
This is only the second experience we’ve had with Peruvian food, the first being at Inka Grill in Costa Mesa. I ordered lomo saltado, something I thoroughly enjoyed before and did not disappoint this time either. I remembered it being served with potatoes but asked for them to be omitted. Extremely flavorful with onions and tomatoes though the cut of beef used was not as good as IG, but it was also 5 bucks cheaper.
I was very curious the first time trying Peruvian food how it reminded me of Chinese food but now after researching I realized that there is a HUGE Chinese presence in Peru which is reflected in the cuisine. One of the famous Peruvian dishes is chaufa which is their version of fried rice. We did not order that though.
The other dish we had was Aji Pollo which was like a very mild chicken curry. With the miracle green sauce which makes everything taste great, it was pretty good although the texture was a bit weird. But like lil guy said the green sauce wasn’t as flavorful nor was it as spicy as the one at Inka Grill.
Run by a Peruvian family, the son takes the order and serves while mom and other family members are in the kitchen preparing. The place is small and has traces of Peruvian AND Chinese decorations. A hole in the wall but a gem nevertheless.