Shanghai Time had me at “it our mission to introduce the traditional Shanghainese Shengjianbao to the New York City culinary community”, I love Sheng Jian Bao and great ones are hard to find in the U.S.  I first tried this style of dumplings at Yang’s Fried Dumplings in Shanghai, which launched my ongoing search to find these dumplings in the U.S. and inspired me to start this blog.  Shanghai Time has got a huge menu, with an array of Shanghainese dishes, lots of dumpling offerings and three styles of Sheng Jian Bao. The marinated pork belly on the cold appetizers menu is amazing, try this. The restaurant is a casual café with super-fast service and doesn’t sell alcohol, but you can bring your own.  Each table has the all-important instructions for eating Sheng Jian Bao without burning yourself with the soup.

The Dumplings:  Shanghai Time serves three types of Sheng Jian Bao: pork, which has a white flour wrapper; pork and crab meat, which has a yellow wrapper; and shrimp, which has a black wrapper.  We tried the pork and pork and crab sheng jian bao, the rice shumai with bacon and the pork and shrimp potstickers.  Both styles of bao were delicious with at least two Chinese soup spoons worth of soup in each bao.  While most places in the U.S. that serve Sheng Jian Bao pan-fry the bottom of the bao, Shanghai Time cooks them the traditional (and better) way with the pleated side pan-fried.  Because the pleats tend to be the thickest part of the wrapper this preparation produces a crispy outer layer to the fried part of the wrapper, with a layer of fluffy sweet dough wrapper beneath the crispy exterior.  Weirdly, while the copy on their web-site makes the point that they prepare the bao in the traditional manner, the banner graphic on their web-site shows the Sheng Jian Bao fried on the non-pleated, bottom side. 

Shanghai style shumai are stuffed with pork flavored savory, sticky rice, usually with flecks of BBQ pork mixed into the rice, making the filling similar to Southern U.S. style “dirty rice”.   Shanghai Time takes these shumai to 11 by adding bacon to the rice.  So good!! The pork and shrimp pot stickers were also really good; flavorful pork and chunks of sweet shrimp with enough juice that they border on being a soup dumpling.  We also got the BBQ pork buns.  The word from my dinning companions was that they were really good, but I was too full to indulge.

The Location.  Shanghai Time is in NYC’s Garment District neighborhood, on 38^th street between 7^th and 8^th Avenues.  It is located almost at the corner of 8^th avenue and this stretch of 38^th street is pretty dismal, so I recommend coming from 8^th Ave as opposed to 7^th Ave.