I recently Googled cheap dumplings in NYC Chinatown and put together a tour of dumpling spots for a friend and I to try out.  The Google search returned a bunch of listicles on best dumpling eating in Chinatown and that should have been my first clue that there was already a well-trod dumpling dining circuit in Chinatown.  We hit four places in one evening and enjoyed a lot of great dumplings, but the places were crowded with tourists and young white people shooting photos for the socials.  The four places we hit were unified by one other feature – they all had large old sriracha bottles filled with soy based dipping sauce on the tables.   

Our first stop was King Dumpling in the corner of Hester and Allen streets.  They were out of pan-fried pork buns so we got the pan-fried pork dumplings.  These dumplings had a thick chewy wrapper with the bottom of the wrapper crispy pan-fried and they had lots of peppery chives mixed into the pork filling.  My friend and I were both impressed that the dumplings were not greasy at all and we enjoyed the toothsome texture of the wrappers. These dumplings were really savory and were perhaps a little over salted.  King Dumpling has one table and a few window counter seats, so we took our dumpling packed to-go container and ate at a table on the pedestrian/cyclist mall that divides the uptown and downtown sides of Allen Street.

Our second stop was at North Dumpling, on Essex street between Grand and Hester streets, which had the best dumplings of the night.  We ordered the steamed vegetable dumplings which appeared to be filled solely with cabbage.  Like King Dumpling, the wrappers were relatively thick and chewy but the cabbage inside was crunchy.   The filling had a distinct peppery taste and we could not decide if it was black pepper, cumin or 5 spice, but between the fresh cruciferous flavor of the cabbage and the pepper these dumplings were delicious.  Like King Dumpling, North Dumpling is tiny and there were no available seats, so we gabbed a park bench in Seward park across the street from North Dumpling.    

Super Taste, on Eldridge Street between Canal and Division streets, seemed to have a largely tourist clientele.  We got the Shanghai Dumplings, which, because there were several other choices on the menu labelled soup dumplings, we were a little surprised to see were also soup dumplings. The dumplings were overcooked and all of the wrappers had ruptured by the time they were served to us.  You can see in the picture that the dumplings were sitting in the container, in a pool of soup.  But the delicate soup was delicious, as was the pork filling of the dumplings.  My friend described the soup this way – lite and nuanced, without too much salt, allowing the flavors to unfold in an orchestral way.  Super Taste is larger than the previous two restaurants and we were able to gets seats and eat in.

We ended the night at Shu Jiao Fuzhou Cuisine on Grand street between Eldridge and Allen streets.  This was the largest and most touristy of our tour stops.  Here we got the steamed mini pork buns, which were packed with chunks of braised pork and chunks of mushroom.  The bun itself was very light and fluffy and slightly sweet.  This was a delicious order of bao.  Shu Jiao Fu Zhou has lots of bench style tables that were basically communal tables with people squeezed in eating their food.  My suggestion is that if you see a gap at a table, just ask your fellow diners if it is OK to squeeze in.