Winter Market at Bryant Park, New York, NY

Posted on November 25, 2019 by rundlea

The European market inspired Winter Market has returned to New York’s Bryant Park, bringing a skating rink and 170 shopping kiosks and food vendors to support the holiday shopping season.   This year’s line-up of vendors provides multiple dumpling dining options.

The Bun Ramen kiosk serves Sheng Jian Bao, pan fried beef, pork, chicken or vegan dumplings, steamed mixed vegetable or chicken dumplings and steamed shrimp shumai.  A major problem with Bun Ramen is that they only have two small fry pans in which to cook the dumplings.  As a result they pre-cook the pan-fried dumplings and stock-pile them in to-go containers, then when a customer places an order they micro-wave the dumplings before serving them.  My order of pan-fried and then micro-waved vegan dumplings looked like they had exploded in the to-go container, it was a mess of over-cooked dumpling wrapper and steaming vegetables.  After I saw the dumpling disaster they had served me, I went back to the kiosk and asked for a fresh serving of dumplings straight from the fry pan.  It turns out, that when fresh, their vegan pan-fried dumplings were quite good.  If you decide to try Bun Ramen, make sure you get the fresh cooked, pan-fried dumplings straight from the fry-pan; if they try to give you some micro-waved dumplings refuse them.

Wonton Tiva was founded on National Dumpling Day, 2018 with the tag line “Hawaiian Handmade Wontons”.  The owner’s family is from Hawaii and he claims to be making wontons using his grandma’s recipe.  Wonton Tiva serves three styles of deep fried wonton: Tiva’s Pork & Scallion which are filled with pork, scallion, garlic, and ginger; Papu’s Tofu & Veggie which are filled with tofu, cabbage, carrot, scallion and ginger; and Chicken and Mushroom filled with marinated chicken, mushroom, garlic and spices.  The wontons come with two sauce options: Hot Soy Mustard made with soy, hot Asian mustard, rice vinegar, honey and toasted sesame; and Sweet Pineapple Chili made with pineapple juice with apple cider vinegar, garlic and red chili.  The Papu’s wonton had a really enjoyable crispy fried crunch, but not a lot of inherent flavor.  However, when dipped in the Hot Soy Mustard and used as a sauce delivery vehicle they were excellent.

The Pierogi Boys kiosk is in the covered Lodge market space near the skating rink. They sell Potato & Cheese pierogi with caramelized onions and sour cream, Sauerkraut & Mushroom pierogi with mushroom gravy and herbs and Meat pierogi with meat gravy and herbs.  While I was dealing with Bun Ramen’s micro-waved mess of veggie dumplings, my friend grabbed some meat pierogi which are filled with braised beef cheeks and pork butt.  As I don’t eat beef all I have to pass along are his comments – he said the blend of beef and pork was really tasty, the gravy was creamy and the thickness of the dough wrapper was just how he liked it.

In addition to these three options at the Winter Market you can get dumplings and bao at Bao by Kaya and Destination Dumplings.

Papu’s Tofu and Veggie wontons from Wonton Tiva
Papu’s Tofu and Veggie wontons from Wonton Tiva
Freshly pan-fried vegan dumplings from Bun Ramen
Meat pierogi from Pierogi Boys
Exploded in the micro-wave pan-fried vegan dumplings from Bun Ramen.
Posted in Bao, Beef, Buns, Chinese, Dipping Sauce, New York City, Pan Fried, Pierogi, Pork, Shumai, Steamed, Vegan, Vegetarian, Veggie Dumplings | Leave a comment

Moonrise Izakaya, New York, NY

Posted on November 18, 2019 by rundlea

Moonrise Izakaya is a new “Japanese Pub” on the Upper-West Side that is trying too hard on the aesthetics and décor and not paying enough attention to the food.   The interior and exterior were painted in an anime style by the Japanese graffiti artist Shiro and inside, many of the surfaces that aren’t sprayed painted are covered with pop stickers.  The stickers on pillars and tables are layered to give the impression they organically accreted over time, like the show flyers on the walls of CBGBs, but they were actually slapped onto the walls just two weeks ago.  The overall affect was distracting and had me thinking that there must be some online store that will drop-ship a pallet of Mc-Japanese, generic anime-ish stickers.  Up-front there is coat room/DJ booth that was pumping out the worst of 80’s pop music.

The chef who designed the menu is Korean so the Pancake with Shrimp and Squid is not Okonomiyaki but instead is a Korean Haemul Pajeon.  The Pork Tonkatsu with Curry was related to the actual Japanese dish in name only.  Pork Tonkatsu is a lean pork cutlet that has been breaded in Panko, deep fried and then sliced into strips.   Moonrise Izakaya’s version was big chunks of fatty mystery meat that had been dipped into batter and then deep fried.  The taste was mainly of fry oil and I left two of the chunks on my plate because they were too fatty and gristly.

Unless it steps up its game a lot, Moonrise Izakaya will not present any competition to the nearby Yakitori Sun Chan or Naruto Ramen.  The most interesting thing about this place was Shiro’s spray painted exterior and the Sailor Moon mural in the bathroom.

The Dumplings:  Moonrise Izakaya serves pork gyoza, vegetable gyoza, shrimp shumai and pork buns.  I tried the vegetable gyoza, which were the run of the mill green colored wrapper gyoza that you find at any low- to mid-tier sushi bar or ramen bar.  Inexplicably the gyoza looked like they had been cooked by crushing them in a panini press, it was weird, visually unappealing and not very tasty.  I also tried the shrimp shumai, which, similar to the gyoza, were frozen generic mini-shumai; they tasted fine, but were nothing special. The shumai were served as a jumbled pile in a bamboo steamer, like someone had shaken the steamer before bringing it to the table.

Sorry the photos are pretty bad, but it is quite dark inside the restaurant.

Location:  Moonrise Izakaya is on the corner of 98th street and Amsterdam in the Manhattan Valley neighborhood.  If you are looking for Japanese Izakaya food in that neighborhood head over instead to Yakitori Sun Chan on Broadway between 103rd and 104th.

Another shot trying to depict the overall unappealing-ness of the gyoza.
Flattened veggie gyoza
Shrimp shumai
Posted in Izakaya, Japanese, Korean, New York City, Potsticker, Shrimp, Shumai, Vegetarian, Veggie Dumplings | Leave a comment

Kitakata Ramen Ban Nai, New York NY

Posted on November 11, 2019 by rundlea

Kitakata Ramen

Kitakata Ramen Ban Nai recently opened on Manhattan’s Upper West Side serving Kitakata style ramen.  They have 57 locations in Japan but can trace their history back to 1958 and Ban Nai Shokudo in Kitakata city.  Kitakata style ramen noodles are thick, flat, and curly, with a high water content and, along with Sapporo ramen and Hakata ramen, are one of Japan’s three major ramen noodle styles. Kitakata Ramen Ban Nai serves miso and shio pork bone broths which are very light in color and flavor.   Since it was my first time, I tried the Kitakata Ramen with added boiled Napa cabbage, which I enjoyed but I prefer the richer, thicker Tonkutsu broths.  Next time, I will need to try the Chashu Ramen, which is a pork bomb that comes with 13 pieces of Chashu pork.

Awesome pork gyoza

The Dumplings:  Pork gyoza are an obligatory item on a NYC ramen bar’s menu, but are usually frozen corporate food service dumplings that are an after thought for the Chef.  However, Kitakata Ramen Ban Nai seems to take it’s gyoza seriously.  The pork filling actually tasted like pork, really good, well seasoned pork, and the gyoza were expertly seared on the bottom and then finished with steam.  Then taking it to 11, the gyoza came with a small dab of Yuzu paste to be mixed with soy sauce and sesame oil, to make a customized dipping sauce.  I love the flavor of Yuzu paste, which is made of chili peppers, yuzu peel and salt, which is then allowed to ferment, and has a spicy, citrus grapefruit flavor with a layer of salty anchovy or fish sauce flavor funk.  I will return to Kitakata Ramen Ban Nai purely on the strength of its gyoza.

Location: Kitakata Ramen Ban Nai is located on Amsterdam ave between 72nd and 73rd streets in Manhattan’s Upper West Side neighborhood.

 

Posted in Gyoza, Japanese, New York City, Pork, Potsticker, Ramen Bar | Leave a comment

Return to XO Taste

Posted on October 28, 2019 by rundlea

XO Taste and its sister restaurant XO Kitchen are two of my favorite restaurants in Manhattan’s Chinatown (reviewed here and here).  I am not sure is XO refers directly to XO Cognac or to XO Sauce, which itself refers to the Cognac.  XO sauce is made of roughly chopped dried seafood, including scallops, fish and shrimp, which have been cooked with chili peppers, onions and garlic.  Their menus are truly enormous and seem to continuously expand, especially when you take into account all of the 8.5 x 11 pieces of laminated paper wallpapering the restaurant and advising on off-menu items. The range of dishes at XO Taste includes some of the funkier items in Chinese cuisine (Diced pork with pickles and spicy tofu or Jelly fish with preserved duck egg and ginger), lots of Hong Kong restaurant classics, some Japanese dishes (curry rice) and some items from the canon of American Chinese food (General Tso’s Chicken).   Almost all of the menu items are dim sum dishes or served as small plates, so dinner usually involves many different items.  I recently returned to XO Taste to see what was new on the menu.

Pork and Shrimp Shumai
Pan Fried Shrimp Buns
Soup Dumplings in Soup
Pork Wonton
Pork Wonton and Noodle Soup

The wall advertisement for pan fried buns with shrimp immediately caught my eye and was our first order. These buns have the pleated twisted tops of soup dumplings and look like soup dumplings that have been fried while being pressed in a panini press.  The wrappers appeared to be made of rice dough but they were very much fried so it was difficult to tell, but they were crispy crunchy good.  The filling was comprised of shrimp, which had a fresh shrimp sweet saline taste, and chives which added a mildly garlic note. These buns are served doused in a sweetened soy sauce.

We also ordered the soup dumplings, which were also on the wall menu.  These soup dumplings were weirdly served in soup, a fact I somehow did not notice from the picture on the wall.  The soup was pretty good, but I did not enjoy soup dumplings in soup, because the dumpling wrappers quickly got waterlogged and started to disintegrate.  The dumplings were adorned with crispy fried garlic chips which tasted great in the soup.

The pork wontons in noodle soup was a much more successful and flavorful dumplings in soup dish.  These pork meatballs covered in wrinkled sheets of noodle were big and dense with a lot of flavor from the well seasoned filling and the soup.  The noodles were cooked al dente and initially had a good chew to them, but they absorb the soup quite fast so do not let them sit. The dish is pretty big, and with so many menu options you don’t want to fill up on only noodles, so it is best to share this dish.  However, it was really hard to serve the noodles into smaller individual serving bowls.  The noodles were very long and just kept coming and coming as I tried to scoop them into individual serving bowls.

The last dumpling dish we tried was the steamed pork and shrimp shumai.  The shumai wrappers were stuffed with pork, with a shrimp sitting on top that had been adorned with fish roe.  With this dish XO Taste once again showed its prowess in making tasty, well seasoned pork filling, and the shrimp tasted fresh and had a nice pop to them when I took a bite.  Across the range of dishes at XO Taste these shumai were further on the American Chinese food side of the spectrum, but they were very tasty.

XO Taste is on Elizabeth street between Canal Street and Hester Street.

Posted in Bao, Buns, Chinese, Chive, Dim Sum, New York City, Noodles, Pan Fried, Pork, Shrimp, Shumai, Soup, Soup Dumpling, Wontons, Xiao Long Bao | Leave a comment

Return to Bund Shanghai Restaurant and a Shout Out to Yuet Lee

Posted on October 21, 2019 by rundlea

Bund’s Xio Long Bao

Bund’s Rice Shumai

The Bund is one of the few restaurants in San Francisco’s old Chinatown neighborhood specializing in Shanghainese food. Most of the city’s Shanghainese restaurants are in the newer Chinatowns in the Sunset and Richmond neighborhoods.  I previously reviewed their Steamed Shrimp and Chive dumplings and the Pan-Fried Pork Buns.

This visit I tried their Xiao Long Bao and their Shanghai style rice shumai, both of which I thought were under seasoned.  The Xiao Long Bao were perfectly steamed and contained a generous amount of soup but the pork and soup were on the bland side and needed salt.  Xiao Long Bao filling also often has a hint of ginger flavor, which I like, but was not present in these dumplings.  But on the plus side, the buns were well made and perfectly steamed so the wrappers maintained their integrity and didn’t leek soup.

Shanghai style shumai are usually stuffed with seasoned, umami filled sticky rice, that has been cooked with pork and Chinese sausage, which is akin to a “dirty rice” from New Orleans.  The rice in Bund’s Shanghai rice shumai was brown sticky rice, but there was no discernible pork or sausage in the rice. The rice was also under salted and didn’t have the level of umami flavor I associate with this style of dumpling.

Bund is on Jackson street between Kearny Street and Grant Avenue

Also when you are in San Francisco you should visit Yuet Lee on the corner of Broadway and Stockton streets.  Yuet Lee’s only dumpling dish is wonton soup, but they have amazing seafood including salted baked head on shrimp, that I love.  Yuet Lee is a classic old-school joint that is open late and perfect for a late night meal after a night of drinking.

Yuet Lee’s dipping sauce
Yuet Lee’s Roast Squab
Posted in Bao, Buns, Chinese, Dipping Sauce, Pork, San Francisco, Shanghai, Shrimp, Shumai, Soup Dumpling, Xiao Long Bao | Leave a comment

Giant Veggie Dumpling Recipe

Posted on October 14, 2019 by rundlea

Egg roll style giant dumplings

Nasoya finally reformulated its wonton and egg roll wrappers to be vegan, so you can now easily find the basics for homemade vegan dumplings in your local super market.  This recipe calls for Asian chives also known as garlic chives, which as the name suggests have a strong garlicky flavor.  We recently discovered Just Egg, which is an amazing vegan egg replacer that can make very convincing scrambles and omelets and can be used as a binder in dumplings.  We made these dumplings on the fly so the ingredient measurements for this recipe are not precise.

 

  • Nasoya Wonton or Eggroll Wrappers
  • Equal parts Asian chives, spinach and shiitake mushrooms
  • 1/3 as much of the green and yellow leafy parts of a Napa cabbage, but not the harder white stalk.
  • Enough tofu to bind the vegetables together.
  • Just Egg
  • Sesame oil
  • Salt and pepper

Veggie filling

Chop the Asian chives, spinach and Napa cabbage and mix together in a bowl with sesame oil, salt, pepper and some Just Egg.  Mix in some tofu and keep adding tofu until the filling starts to bind together.

Chop the shiitake mushrooms and saute in a little oil.  You want to dry saute the mushrooms, so do not add salt, which will release more water from the mushrooms.  Cook until any water that has been released has evaporated.   Mix the mushrooms into the filling mix.

Stuff the wonton wrappers or egg roll wrappers with the filling, and fill the wrappers quite full as the ingredients will shrink as they cook.  We used the egg roll wrappers and made sort of dumpling sausages.  Steam the dumplings and serve.  The leftover cooked dumplings or egg rolls can be refrigerated and then pan-fried the next day, as you see in the photos here.

Posted in Recipe, Steamed, Vegan Recipe, Vegetarian, Veggie Dumplings, Wontons | Leave a comment

Tampopo Ramen, NY, NY

Posted on October 7, 2019 by rundlea

Washington Height’s Tampopo Ramen is Manhattan’s northern most ramen bar.  The place is named for, and decorated in reference to, the classic 1985 Japanese cult film about creating the perfect bowl of ramen.  The restaurant is small, with an open kitchen behind the main ramen bar, and has a few small tables inside and a few more outside. All of their ramen soups use a chicken stock, and since I am a Pork-aterian, I skipped the soup and went for the Yaki Ramen Hakata Style dry ramen dish.  This large plate of stir fried ramen noodles was mixed with slow-cooked pork chashu, kikurage mushroom, corn, bean sprouts, cabbage, carrot, scallions, and was topped with marinated egg.  This Yaki ramen, and their Okonomiyaki, was really flavorful and I really enjoyed eating these two dishes.

Pork Gyoza

Veggie Gyoza

The Dumplings:  Tampopo Ramen was not as successful with its gyoza as it was with its noodles and Okonomiyaki.  They serve the standard ramen joint looking pork gyoza and green dough wrapped veggie gyoza.  Both plates of dumplings were very wet and floppy.  The plates the gyoza were served on had built in wells or dimples to hold sauce, but in the transfer of the plates from the kitchen to our table, the sauce spilled into the plate and the dumplings were served sitting in sauce. I am not sure if this accounts for the wetness of the gyoza or if they were also over steamed.  Basically these were the food service gyoza supplied to most ramen or sushi joints in NYC, just most places prepare them better than this effort from Tampopo.  My suggestion is, that if you want an appetizer before your ramen, get the Okonomiyaki.  You don’t often see Okonomiyaki available in NYC and Tampopo Ramen does it well.

The Location:  Tampopo Ramen is in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood, a little north of the George Washington Bridge.  It is on Bennett Ave, just off of 181st street.  Take the A train to 181st street and walk east on 181st street for about a block and Bennett Ave is on your left.

Posted in Gyoza, Japanese, New York City, Pan Fried, Pork, Ramen Bar, Vegan, Vegetarian, Veggie Dumplings | Leave a comment

Seventh Anniversary of Dumpling Hunter

Posted on October 1, 2019 by rundlea

Vegan Dumplings in Soy and Garlic dressing

Seven years ago today, Dumpling Hunter launched with a review of Shanghai’s Nan Xiang Xiolong Mantou, a meal that was inspired by the much missed Anthony Bourdain and his trip there on the Shanghai episode of No Reservations.  Since then there have been another 394 posts and over 65,000 visitors.  The top restaurants this year were:

Dumpling Shack in the Kitchen section of London’s Old Spitalfields Market.  Their Sheng Jian Bao get all the press and media attention, but the Boiled Vegan Dumplings in Soy Garlic Dressing should not be overlooked.

Tipsy Shanghai, near New York University, made the list for its Sheng Jian Bao and Wonton soup.

Excellent Dumpling House has been around for 37+ years, first in Chinatown and now on 23rd street, and made the list for its Pork Xiao Long Bao and Hot and Spicy Wontons.

The top prepared, super-market dumplings for the home cook were Rising Moon’s, Organic Garlic and Roasted Veggie Ravioli

The lowlight for the year was Bodhi Kosher Vegetarian Restaurant, which is somehow getting reviews on par with Vegetarian Dim Sum Restaurant, but is nowhere near as good, and was frankly bad.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Spicy Moon, NY, NY

Posted on September 30, 2019 by rundlea

Spicy Moon is a relatively new, vegan Sichuan style Chinese restaurant in New York’s East Village neighborhood, that is sensational.  It is a small, ex-ramen joint that has seating for maybe a dozen people and modern interior design sense. You order from Dim Sum style menus that list the menu items with check-boxes next to each item that you mark to indicate your order.  While we were there, there was a mix-up in the kitchen and a nearby table received an extra order of Dan Dan Noodles they didn’t want and we were the lucky beneficiaries.  The noodles were cooked perfectly al dente with a slight chew and were sauced with a smoky, mildly spicy chili oil.  But the master stroke was the use of Beyond Meat’s ground “beef” which almost perfectly imitated the texture and flavor of the minced meat commonly served in Dan Dan Noodles.  After eating these Dan Dan Noodles I see no reason to go back to eating non-vegan versions of this dish.

The Dumplings:  We tried three plates of dumplings and they ranged from great to excellent.  The Steamed Vegetable Dumplings once again showed Spicy Moons’s deft handling of noodle dough.  The dumpling wrappers were on the slightly thicker side and the dumplings were steamed so the dough was cooked just al dente, giving the wrappers a really enjoyable chew.

We also tried the Rice Shumai, which are a vegan version of traditional Shanghai style Shumai, which are classically filled with dirty rice cooked with pork and Chinese sausage.  Somehow Spicy Moon has figured out how to make a vegetable based dirty rice that has the same savory umami flavor as the traditional meat-based dirty rice.  The only indication that the filling was vegetable based was the single pea, corn kernel and piece of carrot decorating the top of each shumai.

The Wontons in Chili Oil was our last selection and I really enjoyed them, but their chili oil cold be spicier and the wontons could have used a little larger portion of filling.  The chili oil had a deep smoky flavor that was great but overshadowed the tofu, Chinese greens and mushroom that filled the wontons. I think that if there was more filling in the wontons the balance between the sauce and the wontons would have been better.

Wontons in Chili Oil
Vegan Shanghai Shumai
Spicy Moon’s front window
Steamed Veggie Dumplings

The Location:  Spicy Moon is on 6th street between 1st and 2nd Avenues, on a block that used to be known as Manhattan’s Curry Alley.  The restaurant scene on sixth street has evolved since it became known for Indian restaurants over 30 years ago and now the block has Japanese, Chinese and Ethiopian restaurants.  You will know Spicy Moon from its bright kaleidoscopic window design and a sign requesting that you not wear fur in the restaurant.

Posted in New York City, Shumai, Sichuan Dumplings, Steamed, Vegan, Vegetarian, Veggie Dumplings, Wontons | Leave a comment

Bodhi Kosher Vegetarian Restaurant, NY, NY

Posted on September 23, 2019 by rundlea

Bodhi’s Banner

Vegetarian Dim Sum House in New York’s Chinatown is my usual go-to for vegan dim sum, but recently I have noticed that Bodhi Kosher Vegetarian Restaurant is getting as good or better reviews online.  So to satisfy my recent dim sum cravings I hit Mulberry Street for some Kosher dim sum. Bodhi Kosher Vegetarian Restaurant has a more extensive list of dumplings (for instance, Curry Dumplings) than Veggie Dim Sum House, so my plan was to have a couple of meals at Bodhi and then do an extensive write-up.  But Bodhi was pretty bad and I decided it was one and done.  In addition to some dumplings, we tried the Buddha’s Delight on Pan Fried Noodles which was a big disappointment.  It had a bland, over corn-starched brown sauce that got increasingly gloppy as the sauce cooled.

Vegetable Soup Dumplings

Pan-Fired Buns

The Dumplings:  I don’t think I have ever seen a vegan soup dumpling on a menu before, so I was excited to try them out.  The dumplings arrived completely over steamed, so the wrappers were water logged and on the verge of disintegration.  The filling was like a thick stew with little pieces of textured soy protein in it, and it had an overall phlegmy texture.  The flavor was overwhelmingly of raw ginger.  These dumplings were really bad.

The Pan Fried Buns came three to an order and looked really good. The golden fried buns were perhaps the lightest and fluffiest Chinese bread product I have eaten and the bun was really enjoyable.  But the filling was made of shredded vegetables, without any noticeable seasoning, and really had no flavor.  Overall, these buns were disappointing.

The Location: I don’t advise going, but if you must, Bodhi Kosher Vegetarian Restaurant is in New York’s Chinatown on Mulberry Street between Canal and Bayard Streets.

Epilogue:  We didn’t eat much at Bodhi and were hungrily wandering through Chinatown when we stumbled upon Mimi Cheng’s Broome Street location.  We got an order of their amazing pan-fried Super V dumplings, which are filled with carrots, chives, napa cabbage and shiitake mushrooms, and were just incredibly flavorful.  Plus their secret dipping sauce is amazing.

Mimi Cheng’s Supper V Dumplings served pan-fried.
Posted in Bao, Dim Sum, New York City, Soup Dumpling, Vegan, Vegetarian, Veggie Dumplings, Xiao Long Bao | Leave a comment