Tong's Restaurant - Super H Mart Naperville

I had a great lunch at Tong's in the Super H Mart in Naperville yesterday. They have a limited menu of dumplings, noodles and jianbing. The spicy noodles consisted of a light broth flavored with chile oil, Sichuan pepper, minced pork, peanuts and a bit of shanghai cabbage. The noodles didn't seem homemade but there was a generous serving of fresh shanghai-style noodles, soft but with a correct bite. I ordered it ma-la and it had a nice spice to it. I also got an order of the fried pork and cabbage dumplings which had a nice thin wrapper and were a bit less greasy than many. There was a spice or herb note I couldn't place in them, but they hit the spot. The two together were a little pricey, totaling $17 all-in, but the portions were larger than necessary. It was some of the best Chinese street food I've had in Chicago and I'll definitely be back.

Tong's Restaurant
inside Super H Mart
1295 E Ogden Ave
Naperville, IL 60563
(630) 548-0888

As a West suburbanite and frequent shopper at Naperville H-Mart, I'm a huge fan. Tong had a short lived stall in the Richland Center which had a little hype for his oddly-rare-in-Chicago jianbing. Its on the menu at H-Mart and I like it fine, satisfyingly light and crisp around the edges with a smear of a hoisin-like sauce and a leaf of lettuce. Noodles are similarly simple and homey. Not home made, but cooked with enough bite.

Those dumplings though! His are my current #1 in Chicagoland, better than anything I've had in Chinatown or Westmont of late. Supple, yet chewy wrappers, quite juicy fillings are popping with aromatic flavors. He does the fabled lattice potsticker, with perfectly crisp interplay to the chewy soft texture of the dumplings. The filling on these is shrimp, chock full of scallions, similar in flavor profile to my dearly departed fish dumplings at Katy's.

On every visit, you can see a team in the back folding dumplings, which leads me to believe they're the house specialty (and 1/3 of the menu.)

Mr. Tong is super accommodating and sweet! He will always give you a head's up about how long each dish will take. We even arrived before they opened one day and he was happy to make our order for us. It took ten minutes, which gave us time to shop at H-Mart.

Its destination worthy- this place is a gem!

Thanks for the reviews, which sent me to Tong's for lunch. I had the Spicy Noodles, which were delicious, with a lot of peanutty taste. The dumpling menu had only pork & , so we got the lattice dumplings w pork & chives. Unfortunately, the minimum order was 10 (or maybe 12), and we were forced to take two of them home, along with 1/2 of Ms. Tomato's WuHan Dry Noodles.

$28 with a bottle of water, a reasonable price I thought, for a large amount of tasty food.

Sadly, Tongs is gone. Anyone with any intel?

tazerowe wrote:Sadly, Tongs is gone. Anyone with any intel?

And I miss my jianbing window once again.
Black crows cry as they wing their way from desiccated high-desert prairie dogs . . .

Huge bummer. That food court is very low energy, fwiw.

His jianbing was good, but his dumplings were transcendent! Hopefully Tong will rise again.

Dagnabbit! His were definitely the best dumplings I've had in Chicago. Unfortunately I only had a chance to eat them twice as every other visit the counter appeared to be closed. I wanted to buy bags of frozen but never got a chance to--wasn't able to try the jian bing either.

This on top of recently finding out Chuan Le's closed, I'm nursing some serious decent suburb Chinese food withdrawal.