Restaurant review: Triumph Valley is the best dim sum in the Seattle area

RENTON — To find the best dim sum in the Pacific Northwest, discerning diners long have known to grab their passports and head north, driving the two-and-a-half hours to eat their way around Greater Vancouver.

Like hockey and the public health care system, that area’s har gow shrimp dumpling game is simply superior to ours.

But the pleasure of that road trip always comes with a side of frustration — to know that the dumpling gods have blessed the ground so close to us, and yet so far away — and to know, too, that our restaurants don’t quite measure up in the steamed-bun department has long felt like a cruel trick to dim sum lovers.

But dear readers, we have a breakthrough. Renton’s Triumph Valley is the first dim sum in Washington state that can plausibly stack up to the Cantonese restaurants around No. 3 Road in Richmond, B.C., the West Coast’s gold standard for Hong Kong-style dim sum.

Triumph Valley serves the best dim sum dish I’ve eaten in recent years — the crispy shrimp rice roll (No. 31 on the menu), a log of prawns bound in a tempura-like shell and then wrapped in a gossamer-thin sheet of steamed rice noodle. It’s a whorl of sweet shrimp in which the texture is as delightful as the taste, combining al dente-like chew with a crunch reminiscent of a potato chip. Imagine the love child of two dim sum classics: the doughnut rice roll and the shrimp rice roll.

Triumph Valley also serves the second-best dim sum dish I’ve had in recent years — a deep-fried, salted-egg-yolk mochi (No. 23 on the menu).

The plate arrives bearing three strange orbs. These eggs are purple, thanks to the ube yam mochi. Strands of golden, fried bean curd fleck their exterior like a shell, adding crunch. Crack this egg. Out oozes a molten sunrise-colored custard with butter, evaporated milk and yolk.

Other local dim sum parlors have attempted similar versions of these two dishes. None has executed them at this level of sophistication. Yongxiao Yang, Triumph Valley’s dim sum chef, deftly and delicately layered his two signature dishes with different textures, flavors and temperatures.

Since opening during the pandemic, Triumph Valley has become so synonymous with dim sum that many don’t realize this banquet hall runs several menu concepts under one roof.

After dim sum ends at around 3 p.m., Triumph Valley shifts to hot pot and Cantonese family-style dinner with lobster and fish from 10 tanks. Both are serviceable menus just not memorable meals, though the sweet-and-sour spared ribs with pineapple was stellar, a grown-up take of the ketchupy, candied pork served at food courts.

But dinner is not why patrons from as far as Everett trek to this Renton standby.

Its dim sum is so beloved that many fans give it a pass for all of its flaws.

On weekdays, Triumph Valley can sputter with spotty service and uneven food quality. Its shrimp har gow dumplings sometimes fall on the mushy side. Its sponge cake is a thud of a pound cake. And its stodgy soup dumpling is an all-points bulletin reminder that only Din Tai Fung and dumpling houses that specialize in xiao long bao should feature that difficult dish on the menu.

The weekend is when this dim sum palace shines. Triumph Valley has no traditional pushcarts stacked with steaming trays. Diners sit and are handed a pencil and a bilingual menu with 59 dishes. Once they hand their checked menu back to the server, a procession of steamed and fried dishes, three to five plates at a time, begin to arrive within 15 minutes.

If all you do is check every box from the fried shrimp dishes, you’ll already be far ahead of any meal you’ve had at mainstays Top Gun in Bellevue or Jade Garden in Seattle. The pan-fried dumpling packed with shrimp, pork and chives bursts with clarion, allium flavors. The deep-fried, bean-curd shrimp wrap is slick and crispy but not greasy.

The daikon cakes have a texture reminiscent of thick mashed potatoes. But these cakes have been seared until their edges are lacy with char. Let that scalding square congeal. It will taste even better a few degrees above room temperature.

Large parties fortify their brunch with one of the “kitchen special” noodles from chow mein to Singapore-style vermicelli. But beef chow fun is the way to go — bouncy noodles with velvety slivers of beef, fried onions and redolent with smoky, wok hei flavors.

Scoring a table on weekends requires some planning, a little luck and a lot of patience.

On a summer Saturday morning soon after opening for the day, the restaurant’s main dining room was packed with 100 diners, with many more — often multigenerational Asian families — spilling over into a second dining room. An hour later, servers scrambled to convert Triumph Valley’s sports bar into a third dining room, to shoehorn in another 80 customers. It was only 11:15 a.m., and the line in the lobby stretched into the parking lot. Older people dragged out folding chairs to wait. Some put their names on the waitlist and left to shop at Ikea nearby. A few people, exasperated, just raised the white flag and left.

During these dark, damp autumn days, the line isn’t as long. But a party larger than four people can expect a wait of at least an hour on weekends if you’re lucky.

Reserving a table is a crapshoot. One day, the host lost my reservation; on another visit, despite a reservation I still had to wait in line.

My advice: make a reservation and hope for the best. Or, come on Fridays after 11 a.m. when the scene is less frantic. If you do come on the weekend, arrive at 9:45 a.m. Once the herd hears the doors unlock at 10 a.m., brace for a possible stampede. Hold your ground. You are so close to the best dim sum this side of the U.S.-Canadian Peace Arch border crossing.