Tipsy Dumpling, the restaurant on the outer corner of Bon Air Center since August, comes from people Greenbrae already knows. Chef Peter Wang and his wife, Jessica Li, have run Oyama Sushi at the same shopping center for about ten years. Before they opened at 340 Bon Air Center, they traveled to four cities in Wang's home country and learned dumpling technique from 20 chefs, according to the Marin Independent Journal's opening report.
So the newest restaurant at Bon Air is really the second restaurant from one of its longer-running tenants. Three histories meet in that corner room. The menu is Chinese dumplings Wang and Li set out to learn. The cocktails come from a sushi chef's background. The bar is the one Patxi's Pizza left behind.
A sushi chef from northeast China, retrained
Wang came to the Bay Area from northeast China, where he worked as a sushi chef, the IJ reported. In Greenbrae, that career has lived at 282 Bon Air Center. That's where Oyama Sushi is listed, and an IJ review in 2018 singled out its selection of 44 sushi rolls. Redwood High School's student paper, the Redwood Bark, called Oyama "recently opened" in April 2016. It was the restaurant's third Bay Area location, after Lafayette and Walnut Creek.
A decade of rolling sushi at one shopping center is a long time to watch a corner across the lot. For this couple, the dumpling house is a second restaurant in a center they already know. The IJ's September review, by correspondent Ann Walker, describes how the work splits: Wang is the chef, and Li oversees dumpling production. The couple "researched well and have kept the menu a manageable size."
The glass wall is the point of the room
Just past the entry, an expansive glass window fills almost an entire wall. Behind it, Li and her team knead the dough, then fill, wrap and pleat it into three styles. When Walker visited, she asked for a table right in front of the window and watched three staff members "attentively rolling, filling and pleating each little bundle."
The three styles cover different ground:
| Style | Order size | Fillings | Price at the time of the IJ review |
|---|---|---|---|
| Xiao long bao, or soup dumplings | Six | Kurobuta pork alone; crab and pork; black truffle and pork | $13; $16; $32 |
| Steamed | Eight | Vegetables; Kurobuta pork with chives and shrimp; beef and onion; corn and pork | $16 to $18 |
| Boiled | Eight | The same pork, beef and corn fillings, with a softer, more tender texture | $17 to $18 |
Steamed and boiled orders come with the house dumpling sauce, a blend of soy sauce, Shanghai vinegar, sesame oil, chili oil and garlic. Kurobuta is Berkshire pork, which Walker noted is sometimes called "the wagyu of pork."
How to eat the soup dumplings without burning your tongue
The restaurant teaches this itself. A screen above the dumpling window plays an animated story about a girl making dumplings with her granny, and it ends with a lesson on eating xiao long bao. Put together, the two IJ pieces give the method:
- Lift one dumpling at a time onto the wide soup spoon at your place.
- Gently break it open, or nibble off the pleated tip, so the hot broth runs into the spoon.
- Sip the broth first, then eat the dumpling.
Walker found the broth "delicate and flavorful." She called the dough light and silky, with pleats that held their shape without turning dense or chewy.
What the IJ critic would order again
Two picks from Walker's review stand out because they aren't the obvious ones. She called the steamed corn and pork "the standout." Slivered pork and whole corn kernels give it "a gentle sweetness," which she found "more intriguing than sweet." Her favorite of the meal was the boiled beef and onion. Boiled dumplings are generally less pretty than other styles and can be a bit sodden, she wrote, but these were "not at all gummy or heavy," and the sauce served with them had "an added distinct ginger zing."
On the other side of the menu, the Chongqing spicy crispy chicken arrives buried under dried red chiles. Walker found the heat came more from numbing Sichuan peppercorns than from the chiles, and the chicken stayed moist inside a crisp coating. The showpiece is a whole sweet-and-sour squirrel fish, $48 at the time of the review. It is butterflied and deeply scored, so the flesh curls into a crisp pinecone pattern in the fryer, with the head and tail left on. The rest of the menu runs from chilled wood ear mushroom salad and Sichuan chili oil wontons to mapo tofu, braised pork belly, Mongolian beef and honey walnut shrimp.
Walker also addressed price directly. Tipsy Dumpling often costs more than most dumpling places in San Francisco, she wrote, "but the quality of the ingredients used at Tipsy Dumpling comes through."
The sushi chef shows up at the bar
The kitchen cooks Chinese food. The bar mixes with Japanese spirits, and that's where Wang's background shows. The IJ listed three cocktails at opening:
- Sakura Sour: Roku Gin, Aperol, lemon and aquafaba, a chickpea-based stand-in for egg white
- Lucky Lychee Martini: Haku Vodka, pineapple juice, lychee and lemon
- Moon Gate: Suntory Toki whisky with honey, lemon juice and chili ginger syrup
Walker went with the Aloe and Jade, $15, a tequila drink with cucumber that she found paired well with dumplings and anything spicy. The list also has nonalcoholic beer and wine, hard kombucha and wines by the glass. OpenTable lists a daily happy hour from 2:30 to 5 p.m.
Patxi's bar, a new room around it
Patxi's Pizza opened at 340 Bon Air Center in August 2015, according to an IJ item from that week. The paper's 2021 year-end roundup reported that the pizzeria closed in the spring of that year, after COVID-related trials.
Wang and Li kept the backlit liquor shelves, with three televisions above them, from that former tenant. Nearly everything else is new. Dark green leather chairs and curved banquettes now fill a 100-seat dining room, and a large sculptural light fixture hangs from the exposed-beam ceiling. Walker found the space "casual yet chic," comfortable for families and for adults on a date. Her practical note was "loud when full."
Outside, the fenced patio adds 45 seats around a fire pit. By Walker's visit in late September, the patio had heaters and shade, and a wooden fence screened it from the traffic on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. Dogs are welcome on the patio. On a November evening, that heated patio is the reason to ask for an outdoor table.
The details for a weeknight
- Address: 340 Bon Air Center, Greenbrae, at the outer corner facing Sir Francis Drake
- Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday; 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday
- Reservations: OpenTable or by phone at 415-886-8909
- Parking: the free Bon Air lot
- Dietary notes: vegetarian and vegan dishes are available; gluten-free options exist, but not among the dumplings
- Takeout: online ordering through tipsydumpling.com
Oyama Sushi is still listed at 282 Bon Air Center on the center's store map, so one couple now runs both a sushi bar and a dumpling house in the same parking lot.
I live and work around Bon Air too, and I love watching a long-running local business take on a second space and make it its own. If you have a favorite order at Tipsy Dumpling or Oyama, or want to talk about what's changing around Greenbrae, Holly Welch would be glad to hear from you. Let's Connect.