In 2015 I ranked Xi’an Famous Food’s veggie dumplings as my favorite of the year and gave them a shout out in my 2016 round-up of dumplings. I continued to feast on their veggie dumplings regularly up until the beginning of the pandemic and they were one of my last meals before I decamped from NYC in Feb 2020.  Previously I described their veggie dumplings as “…stuffed with a giant wad of spinach, some glass noodles and a little egg…” and “…packed with spinach, probably an entire day’s worth of vegetables are in each order,..”.  The spinach filling doused in the fiery and funky, sour and spicy sauce was amazing.

I recently went to a Xi’an Famous Food outlet for the first time since the pandemic and was disappointed by the changes that had been made to their veggie dumplings.  The veggie dumplings contained minimal spinach, which was mixed with filler ingredients that looked like chopped mushrooms and maybe textured soy protein.  Their veggie dumplings seem to have become the generic, green dough wrapper, veggie dumplings you can find anywhere.  The sauce also tasted less pungent and spicy than I remember, it used to be a thrill to slurp down Xi’an Famous Food’s sauce, but on this outing the sauce was, at best, solid or good enough effort.