Review: Even With Service Missteps, Tian Tian Is An Authentic Chinese Food Destination In North Dallas

While Dallas has its share of notable Chinese restaurants, it's unique among major cities in not having a predominantly Chinese neighborhood within the city limits. Richardson Terrace Shopping Center in Richardson may be the closest thing the area has to a Chinatown, and along with neighboring Plano, lays claim to the majority of authentic Chinese cuisine.

We’ve lamented this before, but Dallasites seem averse to driving to the suburbs for dinner. We hate to be the proverbial broken record, but there are respectable dining spots just a short drive north that are worthy of our dining dollars. One of these is Tian Tian, a traditional Chinese restaurant occupying the corner space of a shopping center at Preston and Frankford roads. Although it sports a Dallas address, Tian Tian’s location is close enough to draw from the large population of Chinese Americans in the northern suburbs to support the business.
If the number of busy tables we noticed during our visits is any indicator, Tian Tian seems to be doing just fine with their chosen location. It likely doesn’t hurt that Tian Tian’s menu offers a thoughtful blend of Americanized favorites and traditional Chinese delicacies. We had a few hiccups with some aspects of service that we’ll touch on shortly, but these issues shouldn’t dissuade those in search of a solid Chinese meal.

Tian Tian’s space is clean and modern, finished in warm tones. Tables are spread across the dining room, and while a bar sits in the back corner, there’s no posting up for a pre-meal drink. Instead, it's used as a display spot for the wines and beers available and a staging area for drinks to be poured.

Diners both timid and adventurous are sure to find something to start the meal. There are standard wantons and edamame, and the chicken-filled egg rolls we sampled ($4 for two) were lightly fried, with large chunks of chicken blended with still crunchy cabbage and celery inside the light golden wrapper.

Better options are found when browsing among the dumplings and bao. The gold and silver buns ($8) are an Instagram-worthy dish, with half of the morsel-sized steamed buns getting a quick fry to golden brown, served with sweetened condensed milk for dipping. We also enjoyed the pan-fried pork buns ($7), although the menu promised a soup filling that was missing on our order.

There was more broth to be found in the xiao long bao ($8) and a delicious pork filling to be savored after you’ve drained the broth from the dumpling. Fortune House in Irving is still our standard-bearer for xiao long bao in Dallas-Fort Worth, but Tian Tian’s version is quite good.
Customer reviews of Tian Tian almost always mention the Peking duck, for good reason. A half duck is $26 but comes with a duck broth soup and impossibly thin wonton pancakes. The duck is served sliced, and the crispy skin and fatty duck are solidly executed here.

We were also impressed by the black garlic barbecued pork spareribs ($14). The garlic flavor could have been a touch stronger, but the boneless bites of sweet pork were spectacularly tender.

Traditional Chinese-American dishes are on Tian Tian’s menu. We had a serviceable cashew chicken ($13) that was swimming in too much sauce, but we found the orange chicken ($14) to be a better choice. There was a playful blend of bright citrus from the orange peel and heat from the red pepper, all wrapped in tender chunks of breaded chicken breast. Sure, it’s a sweet dish that’s tuned to American palates, but it’s well done nonetheless.


Less impressive was the scallop fried rice, which was promised with both fresh scallops as well as dried scallop flakes. Ours came to our table with darkened dried flakes that looked less than appetizing and precisely two thin slices of fresh scallop in the entire dish. The flavor of the fried rice wasn’t bad in and of itself, but for $16, we were hoping for more than two bites of fresh seafood.

You may recall our recent story about Tian Tian and their Bellabot, a robotic server that helps shuttle meals to patrons. In our visits for this story, we were never served by the droid, which admittedly left us feeling a touch disappointed. On one of our visits on a busy Saturday evening, we watched the Bellabot glide quietly by our table several times to deliver dishes across the restaurant, but it seemed to idle next to the kitchen while the human staff hurried orders out. Maybe the robot is pressed into more duty when staffing is more of a challenge.
Robots or not, we never felt that Tian Tian was running short of help. But the service can be scattered, including one of the oddest deliveries of an entrée to our table we'd ever experienced. Two of us were seated at a four-top table, and one of our dinner entrées had already arrived several minutes earlier. Just before we were about to flag someone down about the missing plate, a server who we hadn't interacted with walks by our table with an armful of dishes, one of which she slides onto the far end of our four-top without breaking stride or so much as a confirmation of what was being delivered. It was so unexpected that both of us were still discussing it several hours later.

There were a few other service gaffs. On the same visit as the drive-by dinner delivery, our check arrived from another server in a similar fashion, then sat untouched on our table with our credit card clearly visible for another 10 minutes. On another visit, we ordered appetizers first and asked for a bit more time to make an entrée decision. The appetizers appeared quickly, but the menus were collected before we placed our main orders. In reading other diner's reviews on Yelp, Google and the like, several mentions of dodgy service jumped out.

That's not to say that all the waitstaff were rude and aloof. And in fairness, some of this could possibly be attributed to different cultural expectations of service in restaurants. In America, we expect to be doted on and pampered, but that kind of attention is actually considered intrusive and nosy in many Asian cultures. Popular spots are judged only on the food and not how often the waiter chats you up. It's not to say that there's no sense of hospitality in Asian culture — quite the opposite is true. But in China, dining out is considered more a product than a service.

This is a fine line to navigate. We hope that our service experiences don't dissuade visitors to Tian Tian, because that's certainly not our intent; we feel that the execution of dishes are worth the trip. We don't seem to be alone in that regard, either. Tian Tian appears to be doing a thriving business, judging solely by the number of people we've seen during our visits. It's difficult not to miss that the majority of the clientele were of Asian descent, which may support our notion that any apparent slights in service are not that big of a deal. That Tian Tian would have a robot assisting with bringing diners their meals, with no chance of human interaction, only further reinforces the transactional nature.

Chinese restaurants, especially ones that are more than just takeout spots, have long faced an uphill battle in this country. For many Chinese immigrants, opening a restaurant served as the only way to bypass laws that were designed to keep them out of the country. During the most recent pandemic, many Chinese restaurants were unfairly shunned by misguided diners who linked the coronavirus that first broke out in Wuhan, China, with restaurants that served food from the same region.

In areas around North Dallas, Plano and Richardson, new restaurants like Tian Tian are helping us reimagine Chinese food from takeout fare that's sweet and tame to one that celebrates all the flavors and textures that Chinese cuisine has to offer. In that regard, Tian Tian is already a success.

Tian Tian, 18101 Preston Road #204C. Dinner 4:30 -9:30 p.m. Monday - Thursday; 4:30-10 p.m. Friday - Sunday. Lunch 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m. daily.