The Bund Shanghai Restaurant in San Francisco’s old Chinatown is named after the old colonial business district along the Huangpu River in Shanghai.  It gets good reviews online and so it was the first place I tried during my visit.  Like a lot of restaurants in Shanghai the Bund provides a bowl of small crunchy peanuts as a free appetizer.

The Dumplings: The Bund sells a wide range of dumplings including the tradition soup dumplings, three kinds of pot stickers and several choices of boiled dumplings.  I tried the boiled shrimp and chive dumplings and the pan fried pork buns.

Boiled shrimp and chive dumplings – Rather than using minced or processed shrimp and fish, the boiled shrimp and chive dumplings were filled with big chunks of shrimp and an abundance of chopped chives.  These dumplings had a nice sweet, fresh shrimp flavor that was balanced with the peppery flavor of the chives, great dumplings.

Pan Fried Pork Buns – These buns were breadier and had a lower meat to bun ratio than I have seen before in this style of dumpling.  Unfortunately the bottoms of these buns were quite burned and the flavor of burnt bread and, maybe too old fry oil, overwhelmed whatever flavor the pork filling was supposed to have.

The Dipping Sauce:  the boiled shrimp and chive dumplings came with a simple soy dipping sauce and the pork buns came with a black vinegar sauce with slivered ginger.

The Location: The Bund Shanghai Restaurant is in the oldest of San Francisco’s four Chinatowns which is just north of Union Square.  This is the oldest Chinatown in North America.  I hear the food in the Fremont Chinatown is better than in old Chinatown, which gets a lot of tourist visitors, but it is harder to get to Fremont without a car.

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