Inside DumplingGo
I reviewed DumplingGo a couple of months ago but they have been changing up their menu recently so I decided to return and try their new offerings.
The Dumplings: for this outing I tried the Flounder Dumplings and Black Pepper Fish dumplings. Continue reading
Following on from the East Village, I have been expecting an explosion of dumpling restaurants in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood but it hasn’t really happened yet. There is an outpost of Vanessa’s and the nearby M Shanghai Bistro and Garden. While M Shanghai feels like a hipster bar thinly decorated with Shanghai style accouterments, there appears to be a crack team of Shanghai chefs in the kitchen sending out some great dishes. The menu is based on the owner’s Grandmother’s cooking and her happy memories of eating homemade dumplings with her family. Continue reading
Canteen 82 Peking Duck Bao
The co-owners of Canteen 82 hail from Malaysia and Hong Kong and the chef is from Shanghai, perhaps explaining the Asian-Fusion menu hidden behind the restaurant’s sub-title “Taste of Shanghai”. The menu includes lots of American-Chinese dishes, Sushi, cooked Japanese dishes, a few Thai options, a hand full of Shanghaiese dishes and a large selection of dumplings. They also have a decent set of vegan options.
The Dumplings: The dumplings at Canteen 82 are all in-house, home made and include Bao, Xiao Long Bao and Jiao Zhi. The web-site also has pictures of Sheng Jian and some prior articles gave these dumplings strong reviews, but they have since been removed from the menu – apparently demand was low. I tried the crab and pork Xiao Long Bao, the Peking Duck Bao and the Shangdong Dumplings. Continue reading
Vegetable Buns
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If you have eaten fake meat in an Asian restaurant on the Eastern seaboard the chances are it was provided by May Way, the go-to place for fake meat products and vegan dry foods since 1994. Their line of products include Veggie Prawns, Sweet and Sour Citrus Spare Ribs, Crispy Chicken Nuggets, Shumai, Dumplings, Delicious Chicken Legs, Spicy Gong Bao Chicken, Smoked Chicken, Corn Burgers and Vegetable Burgers. May Wah imports its branded products from Taiwan, where they are made by Taoist and Buddhist manufacturers. The inside of the store in New York’s Chinatown looks like a 7-Eleven, the store is brightly neon lit and the walls are lined with glass doored freezers like the coolers in a convenience store, but instead of being packed with ice-cream and soda they are packed with bags of frozen vegan and vegetarian food. The staff at the store are really friendly and provide cooking tips and menu ideas and lots of free samples of their food, the lemon chicken and the BBQ Pork were really good, the grilled salmon was a little too fishy.
Packed with vegetables
The frozen vegetable fist sized buns come four to a pack and can be heated up in a micro-wave or steamed. These were some of the best steamed buns I have tried. The filling is a mix of cabbage, carrots, glass noodles and either finely minced bok choy or broccoli – I couldn’t quite tell. I went the steamer route to re-heat the buns which worked great and took about 15 minutes. The bread of the bun came out really light and fluffy and slightly sticky. The filling had a mild cabbage cruficerous flavor, but was also quite savory which balanced the sweetness of the bun bread.
Vegetable Shumai
Wild Ginger, also known as LuAnne’s Wild Ginger, bills itself as providing pan-Asian vegan specialties based on traditional Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Thai, and South Asian cuisines. They claim to make over two-dozen homemade sauces and to use local produce. I have eaten here a couple of times; the salt and pepper fried king-oyster mushrooms are excellent, a great substitute for salt and pepper fried squid, and I really liked their Singapore Chow Mei Fun. The restaurant interior is reminiscent of a Tikki Hut with low lighting and lots of dark hard wood. Continue reading
Steamed Kimchi Pork Dumplings
DumplingGo is a new fast-casual chain starting up in NYC with a focus on health conscious food and packing Asian and Western flavor profiles into dumpling wrappers. They have taken the Chipotle approach to ordering with instructions hanging above the counter that read – 1) select fried or steamed, 2) choose a filling from the list below, and 3) choose a dipping sauce. Generally I think of the new fast-casual places as providing a slightly better ambiance than a traditional fast food joint and the interior space, tables and seating was nice, but the food came plonked down on styrofoam plates and the dipping sauce comes in a little plastic to-go tub.
The Dumplings: DumplingGo offers a big selection of dumplings and mixes it up with the flavor profiles. They offer: Thai Basil Chicken, Mexican Chili Beans Beef, Korean Kimchi Pork, Black Pepper Seafood, Shrimp with Celery and Carrots, Five-Flavor Eggplant, String Beans & Pork, Vegetable Mushroom and Red Bean. On the day I went they also had a couple of dumpling specials of the day. The vegetable filled dumplings are vegan. Continue reading
Fried Pork Dumplings
Cana Korean Restaurant is a great find in Western MA; two other local Korean restaurants recently closed and the other one I know of in the Pioneer Valley is terrible. So this is my new go-to place for Korean food, they serve a good selection of banchan and the pork Soon Du Bu I had was excellent. Cana has an extensive Korean menu, that includes Korean table BBQ, traditional Korean dishes, Korean-Chinese dishes, a large vegetarian section and a gluten free section. Cana has two dining rooms with all of the BBQ tables housed in one of the dining rooms. This is a nice feature, vegetarians and vegans can eat in the other room and not get coated in BBQ meat smoke.
Pan-fried mini-pork dumplings
Mom’s Dumpling and Noodle is a little bit of a misnomer, it only sells two varieties of dumplings and three varieties of noodles. The menu lists more rice plates that it does dumplings, and also includes kimchi, braised pork feet and braised eggs – the last of which I highly recommend. Mom’s Dumpling and Noodle, which opened in late 2014, is an offshoot of the well regarded Mom’s House Chinese Market that has been selling to-go Chinese meals and groceries for the past 15 years on Route 9.
The Dumplings: Mom’s serves pork and vegetable dumplings that are prepared either steamed or pan-fried. The pork dumplings are mini-sized, like slider dumplings, and come twelve to an order for $4.99. The pork filling was a mix of pork and scallions and the pan-fried preparation was juicy and tasty. Mom’s doesn’t provide a lot of dumpling choices but it is well worth stopping in to try the mini-pork dumplings. Continue reading
Chinese food carts
Just off Columbia University’s Morningside Heights campus you can find a string of food carts selling Chinese food. These are not hip new food trucks, but old school NYC coffee and falafel carts refurbished to sell Chinese food. They appear to cater to Columbia’s Chinese student community; there is no General Tso’s Chicken style American-Chinese food for sale here and the owners of the carts I sampled did not speak English, and I had to have one of the other customers translate for me. Each cart has a menu of about ten options, including a couple of dumpling choices. Continue reading
As part of its ongoing Dumpling Month celebration Lucky Peach just published a Guide to Chinese Dumplings that provides a description and illustration of 36 different types of Chinese dumplings. I am hungry now.
Bing Dumpling News
The search for the world's best dumplings 