When you visiting New Mexico, you ought to feel duty-bound to eat as much of the native cuisine as possible, probably more so than in any state not named Louisiana. But sometimes you need a little break. For us, one of those times came at Dumpling Cafe, a modest dumpling-forward Chinese place a block from the Santa Fe Railyard. If you've had dim sum in New York or Vancouver or Houston or LA or San Francisco or even some smaller city with a significant Chinatown, your sights might be set pretty high. Lower them somewhat, and you'll find Dumpling Cafe relatively enjoyable. It's a charming little spot--one whole wall is filled with a wild variety of knick-knacks--and the staff is very friendly. The dumplings themselves may appear quite expensive ($10-12), but they're huge and come in orders of six, which is more than you get with most dim-sum items. (We over-ordered and had quite a nice collection of leftovers for the next evening after a long daytrip, and they were brought to new life (just a hint of extra flavor and crispiness) after a little pan-frying.) Not the most robust in flavor, but decent enough to be satisfying. The exception might have been the soup dumplings, which had an unfortunate technical problem: barely a drop of soup inside. That was frustrating and disappointing.Dumpling Cafe actually offers quite a bit more than dumplings: fried-rice dishes, a few standard Chinese-American entrees, noodle dishes, and so on. And a few non-Chinese things like bibimbap and seaweed salad. The seaweed salad was the only other thing we tried, and it was OK. 3.5 stars, rounded up.
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