I generally avoid the Times Square area in NYC, but I needed to get A to the train after a session at Local 42, a great dive bar on 9^th ave, and ended up walking along 42^nd street. Thankfully I stumbled upon DD Soup Dumpling & Hibachi, which is a fusion restaurant that sells Shanghainese soup dumplings and shumai, American-Chinese food and Teppanyaki with the full show experience.  Teppanyaki is food cooked on a large flattop grill in front of group of diners, and the cooking is accompanied by a show put on by the chef, who might juggle utensils, flip food through the air, and create flaming food volcanoes.  Teppanyaki is thought to have originated in 1945 in Japan when the restaurant chain Misono developed the concept of cooking Western-influenced food on the teppan (flattop grill).  This concept proved popular with tourists to Japan but not so much among the Japanese.  Teppanyaki restaurants focusing on Japanese diners sell yakisoba and okonomiyaki and downplay the show.  Teppanyaki was popularized in the US by the Benihana chain.          

DD Soup Dumpling & Hibachi has a half dozen Teppanyaki stations, table seating for maybe 20 diners and a small cocktail bar. The Chinese menu has a Dim Sum with a good selection of dumpling options, and then sections covering all the usual American-Chinese dishes.The Teppanyaki menu offers a wide selection of grilled meat options. 

The Dumplings: The Dim Sum menu offers pork soup dumplings, crab meat and pork soup dumplings, pan fried veg and pork dumplings, steamed shrimp dumplings, steamed chicken dumplings, boiled seafood and pork dumplings, Shanghai style sticky rice Shumai, Shepherds purse wontons, steamed veg dumplings, pan fried pork buns and vegetable buns with mushrooms.

Both styles of soup dumpling were excellent, with a lot of flavorful soup and tasty meat filling.  They were also prepared really well, so they were blazing hot but not over cooked, and each of the dumplings maintained its integrity as they were lifted out of the steamer.  Too often soup dumplings are over cooked and the wrappers lose their integrity and the soup spills out, either in the steamer or when you pick them up. 

We also got the pan-fried pork buns, which were also really tasty and actually had soup inside. But the buns needed to be fried a little browner on the bottom to develop deeper flavors from the Maillard reaction. But I will give DD Soup Dumplings props for actually having soup in their pork buns.  In the US you rarely find restaurants serving pan-fried pork soup dumplings (Shen Jian Bao) with actual soup in them.  It always seems like the soup has been absorbed into the soft, bready bun wrapper during the cooking process.

The Location:  DD Soup Dumplings and Hibachi is on 42nd street between 8^th and 9^th avenues in NYC’s Times Square neighborhood.  I am hoping that DD stands for Dumplings on the Deuce.