Coffee Break is a french pastry coffee shop that suddenly decided to add Chinese food, primarily Shanghainese dishes, to its menu. Coffee Break caught my eye because the new signage advertised Pan Fried Buns (Sheng Jian Bao). The chef is from Shanghai and I guess he spotted that dumpling houses were opening up locally and doing good business with the international students at nearby Columbia University. So Coffee Break is now a weird mash-up where you can get a croissant, palmier, macaron or napoleon and salted sausage vegetable rice, scallion pan cakes stuffed with beef, sliced beef & tripe in chili oil or omurice.
The Dumplings: Coffee Break sells pork or pork and crab soup dumplings (Xiao Long Bao), pan-fried pork buns (Sheng Jian Bao), steamed buns with mushroom and bok choy, pan fried pork dumplings, steamed vegetable dumplings, steamed pork dumplings and steamed chicken dumplings. I went with the pork soup dumplings and the pan-fried pork buns.
Sheng Jian Bao
Ever since eating at Yang’s Fried Dumplings in Shanghai (which is when I decided to launch this blog) I have been on a mission to find good Sheng Jian Bao in the U.S. These buns are the cousin of the soup dumpling, that have slightly thicker dough wrappers that can withstand being fried and then steamed, and like soup dumplings are filled with a pork meat ball and pork aspic soup. They are usually served with slivered scallions and sesame seeds sprinkled on top. These buns are hugely popular in Shanghai and are traditionally eaten for breakfast. The problem with most Sheng Jian Bao in the U.S. is that the bun is too thick and doughly/bready and the bun ends up absorbing all the soup. The result is a flavorful moist bun wrapper but there is never any soup for slurping.
The Sheng Jian Bao at Coffee Break use the U.S. style bready buns but still somehow managed to have lots of soup inside that hadn’t soaked into the bun dough. The soup was a little salty but a really flavorful fatty pork broth. One of the reasons I like this style of soup dumpling is that the pan roasting of the slightly sweet dough creates tasty Maillard reactions and some caramelization on the bottom of the bun that brings extra dimensions of flavor to the dumpling that you don’t get with steamed soup dumplings. I went to Coffee Break twice over a weekend before writing this review and in between my visits they went from six buns per serving to only four per serving.
Continuing with the soup dumpling theme, I also tried their pork Xiao Long Bao, which come four soup dumplings per order. The order I got was a little overcooked, two of the dumplings came with tears in the wrappers and it was a struggle to pick the dumplings up without shredding the wrappers. But, holy crap, the soup in these dumplings was amazing, it was like creamy, rich pork tonkotsu ramen broth. These dumplings were a little hard to eat, but they were some of the most flavorful soup dumplings I have tried.
The Dipping Sauce: there is a Kikkoman bottle on each table and the soup dumplings come with the typical black vinegar dipping sauce. But really the soup inside these dumplings is so rich and tasty I don’t think you need dipping sauce.
The Location: Coffee Break is in the Manhattan Valley neighborhood on Amsterdam Avenue between 105th and 106th streets, just north of the New York City Youth Hostel.
The search for the world's best dumplings 
Hello: My husband and I lived in China with our two young sons in 1986/87. We lived in the northeast of Shanghai along the Huang Pu River and near Fudan University. We had to shop each morning and one of our favorite stops was the dumpling storefront. They made only one type of dumpling which was cooked on a repurposed oil drum. The dough was not made from all white flour. It appeared to have something like buckwheat in it. The shape was like C batteries, but only about 1 1/2″ tall. They were filled with pork and browned on the bottom. They were heavenly and we’ve never found anything like them in the U.S. Have you come across anything like this? Thank you. Gloria Dove
On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 4:16 AM, The search for the world’s best dumplings wrote:
> rundlea posted: “Coffee Break is a french pastry coffee shop that suddenly > decided to add Chinese food, primarily Shanghainese dishes, to its menu. > Coffee Break caught my eye because the new signage advertised Pan Fried > Buns (Sheng Jian Bao). The chef is from Shanghai and” >
I have not come across anything like these. They sound good.
You make these dumplings sound so nice that you have to take us on a scavenge next time we are in NYC. We have never done a dumpling hunt with you but after reading all your blogs we really need to!!
xx M & D