Our story
A longer line than the tent.
Jade House started as a weekend stall in Rice Village. The dumplings were folded by hand and the line kept outgrowing the canvas. Seven years later, we are five full service houses across Houston, and we are still folding by hand.
Mei & Daniel Lin
We just wanted to feed people the way we were fed.
Mei grew up folding dumplings at her grandmother's kitchen table in Taipei. Daniel grew up eating them. When they moved to Houston, they could not find the version they missed, so they started making it themselves on weekends.
The first customers were neighbors. Then the neighbors brought friends. Seven years later the recipe has not changed, and neither has the reason we do this. We like watching a table go quiet when the first basket lands.
By hand
Every dumpling is pleated in house each morning. No machines, no shortcuts, no freezers.
For everyone
Full service and family friendly. High chairs, big tables, and a stool at the counter for one.
Same everywhere
One recipe book and one standard, whichever house you walk into.
How we got here
A stall in Rice Village
Mei and Daniel started with a folding table, a borrowed steamer, and a weekend tent. The line kept getting longer than the tent could handle.
The first house
They signed a real lease in the Heights, painted the brick green, and opened a dining room where people could actually sit down and stay a while.
Katy and Downtown
Two more houses opened in two years, built by cooks who started on the line and were ready to run their own room.
Five and counting
With Sugar Land open, Jade House now folds dumplings across five Houston neighborhoods. Same recipes, same folds, same standard.
"We are not trying to be the fanciest room in town. We just want the dumplings to be worth the drive, and the table worth staying at."
Mei & Daniel Lin, Founders