Wontons stuffed with soy cheese, spinach and watercress

Stuffed with spinach and soy cheese

For the vegan in New York City Wild Ginger’s menu provides breadth and depth, almost everything I have tried has been really good.  I previously reviewed Wild Ginger when I tried their steamed vegetable dumplings and vegetable shumai, which were good but I don’t think they are homemade.  During my most recent visit I tried the fried wontons stuffed with soy cheese, spinach and watercress.

While I admit that these dumplings sounded gross to me and I had to be convinced to order them by my dining companion, they turned out to be really good; better than their vegetable dumplings or the shumai.  The filling was mainly comprised of spinach and I didn’t notice any peppery watercress flavor, but the spinach mixed with the creamy, American cheese style soy cheese was really tasty.  The wontons were perfectly deep fried and crispy and crunchy without any oiliness.  The menu suggests that these wontons are homemade and judging from the non-uniformity of the folding (you can see this in the picture) I don’t think they are factory made.

The wontons are served with a mango dipping sauce which I thought was pretty bad.  It appeared to be pureed mango and was hot dog mustard yellow in color.  The sweet mango flavor did not compliment the dumplings in any way.

Wild Ginger’s Manhattan location is on Broome Street between Mott and Mulberry, at the Northern edge of Chinatown, and their Brooklyn location is on Smith Street in Brooklyn.