Jerry Ma at Epic Proportions has done it again – dumpling themed art (see my review of his graphic novel, The Dim Sum Gang). He just released a limited edition illustrated art print, “Around the World in 50 Dumplings”. The dumplings are all rendered in Jerry’s comic illustration style, and anthropomorphized with faces and individual expressions. They look like they could be the cast for the much anticipated Dim Sum Gang sequel.
Jerry managed to include many of my favorites and some I have yet to try. But inexplicably he overlooked the Cornish Pasty, Britain’s contribution to the dumpling kingdom. The British contributions to world cuisine are too commonly overlooked.
Shanghai Time had me at “it our mission to introduce the traditional Shanghainese Shengjianbao to the New York City culinary community”, I love Sheng Jian Bao and great ones are hard to find in the U.S. I first tried this style of dumplings at Yang’s Fried Dumplings in Shanghai, which launched my ongoing search to find these dumplings in the U.S. and inspired me to start this blog. Shanghai Time has got a huge menu, with an array of Shanghainese dishes, lots of dumpling offerings and three styles of Sheng Jian Bao. The marinated pork belly on the cold appetizers menu is amazing, try this. The restaurant is a casual café with super-fast service and doesn’t sell alcohol, but you can bring your own. Each table has the all-important instructions for eating Sheng Jian Bao without burning yourself with the soup.
The Dumplings: Shanghai Time serves three types of Sheng Jian Bao: pork, which has a white flour wrapper; pork and crab meat, which has a yellow wrapper; and shrimp, which has a black wrapper. We tried the pork and pork and crab sheng jian bao, the rice shumai with bacon and the pork and shrimp potstickers. Both styles of bao were delicious with at least two Chinese soup spoons worth of soup in each bao. While most places in the U.S. that serve Sheng Jian Bao pan-fry the bottom of the bao, Shanghai Time cooks them the traditional (and better) way with the pleated side pan-fried. Because the pleats tend to be the thickest part of the wrapper this preparation produces a crispy outer layer to the fried part of the wrapper, with a layer of fluffy sweet dough wrapper beneath the crispy exterior. Weirdly, while the copy on their web-site makes the point that they prepare the bao in the traditional manner, the banner graphic on their web-site shows the Sheng Jian Bao fried on the non-pleated, bottom side.
Shanghai style shumai are stuffed with pork flavored savory, sticky rice, usually with flecks of BBQ pork mixed into the rice, making the filling similar to Southern U.S. style “dirty rice”. Shanghai Time takes these shumai to 11 by adding bacon to the rice. So good!! The pork and shrimp pot stickers were also really good; flavorful pork and chunks of sweet shrimp with enough juice that they border on being a soup dumpling. We also got the BBQ pork buns. The word from my dinning companions was that they were really good, but I was too full to indulge.
The Location. Shanghai Time is in NYC’s Garment District neighborhood, on 38th street between 7th and 8th Avenues. It is located almost at the corner of 8th avenue and this stretch of 38th street is pretty dismal, so I recommend coming from 8th Ave as opposed to 7th Ave.
Ninja Bao is a small kiosk sized restaurant in the underground concourse of Philly’s Suburban Station. They have an extensive menu that serves bao, gyoza, buns, wontons, sheng jian bao, and ramen. Ninja Bao is counter service and has seating for about a dozen people, and when I was there for lunch it was doing crazy amounts of take-out business. Both of my dumpling orders were served in to-go boxes with little tubs of dipping sauce. This is a great place to get tasty food during duty jury lunch breaks.
The Dumplings: Ninja Bao has an extensive menu of bao, gyoza and wontons and I tried the pork wontons in chili oil and the sheng jian bao (pan fried soup dumplings). The wonton filling does not have the usual aromatics of ginger and garlic mixed into the pork, instead they use aromatics-infused water to make the wonton skins. They take this approach so that you get the flavor but don’t bite into pieces of garlic or ginger in the filling. The tasty filling is also flavored their homemade soy sauce. The wontons come doused in chili oil and adorned with chopped scallions and cilantro, but while flavorful, the chili oil is disappointingly mild.
The sheng jian bao come 6 to an order and are pan-fried golden brown on the pleated side. The bao skins are admirably thin and the pork filling is seasoned with scallions and fresh ginger and is super flavorful. The bao I was served only had a modest amount of soup inside, but was rich and flavorful. Ninja Bao is a tiny place so you get your soup dumplings almost directly off the fry pan, so they are really hot. Make sure you follow correct procedures for eating these buns or you will get burned.
The Location: Ninja Boa is in Suburban Station’s underground concourse near City Hall. Use the escalators across from City Hall (directly west of City Hall) to go down to the concourse level. At the bottom of the escalators you should see the Post Office, Ninja Bao is about 20 yards to the left of the Post Office, past the Dunkin Donuts.
The Dim Sum Gang is a dark graphic novel that uses the anthropomorphized perspective of pieces of dim sum to critique the profession of Dumpling Hunting and advance a raw food agenda. The story begins with the origin story of a Xiao Long Bao’s awakening consciousness as it is assembled from dough, soup and pork filling and then steamed. Bao’s happiness in the warm steamer basket is short lived as it sees its companions snatched away by swooping, diving chop sticks. With the help of two pieces of Stinky Tofu co-joined on a skewer, Bao makes its escape and begins its journey across a landscape of Chinese banquet tables littered with steamer baskets. Along the way Bao meets a cast of dim sum characters, such as Sticky Rice and Chicken Foot and the Queen of the banquet, Peking Duck. The journey leads up to a battle royal between two Sesame Balls, in which sesame seeds fly like throwing stars in an issue of Frank Miller’s Daredevil or Neal Adams’ Armor. Throughout the journey Stinky Tofu acts as the story’s Greek chorus and reader’s acerbic guide to the world of Dim Sum. One wonders whether Stinky Tofu is a reference to Yuen King-Tan’s Abacus Fong character in Michelle Yeoh’s classic 1994 film Wing Chun.
While the story could superficially be read as the finding of family or community through the adversities of a hero’s journey narrative, the Dim Sum Gang is actually both a woke polemic demonizing food bloggers and social media food influencers and sly, but confusing, propaganda for the raw food movement. While food bloggers are largely relegated to the gutters around the frames, the only in-frame illustration of a food blogger is of a hapless newbie experiencing the face burn of biting directly into a Xiao Long Bao. Nowhere in the story are the cultural and social contributions of the food blogger depicted, nor the job creation benefits to society, or the hardships and health risk of excess eating faced by the food blogger. The scene in which Bao is able to hide beneath Stinky Tofu, because no one wants to touch Stinky Tofu, is ridiculous. No self-respecting food blogger would turn away from Stinky Tofu, like the obvious metaphor to Abacus Fong, Stinky Tofu has a soft interior beneath its harsh aggressive façade.
The notion that Bao gains sentience and begins its hero’s journey through the process of being assembled and steamed reveals the author’s extreme pro-raw food agenda. Clearly the authors are saying that only raw unprocessed foods can be ethically consumed by food bloggers. Since it is impossible to eat an unassembled dumpling, the story attempts to single out Dumpling Hunting as inherently wrong. But the slaying of one vegan sesame ball by another in the final Ninja throwing star/seed fight scene calls into question whether the authors are trying to indoctrinate the reader into full on raw food veganism. After all, on the pen-ultimate page the sesame ball cries “Are you not entertained?!” As such the authors appear to subvert their original pro-raw food vegan message, leaving this reader ultimately confused. The authors acknowledge this contradiction in the final frame with Stinky Tofu saying “Seriously – what the Hell just happened?” (perhaps alluding to the final battle in Wing Chun). This final panel lets the average reader off the hook, leaving only the Dumpling Hunter as the target of the author’s sharp barbs.
The Dim Sum Gang was drawn by Jerry Ma and written by Parry Shen. I drank some Scotch with Jerry at the NY Comic Con and he gifted me a copy of the Dim Sung Gang. He has created art for the NY Mets and the NY Asian Film Festival and published the excellent “Monkey King” graphic novel. His work can be seen and purchased at the Epic Proportions website; buy Dim Sum Gang there. I am the very happy owner of several pieces of Jerry’s original art.
Lisa’s Dumplings is in the Turnstyle Underground Market, one of the NYC MTA’s attempts at an Asian style underground shopping arcade. Lisa’s has an open kitchen concept where the dumpling wrappers are rolled out on a counter in front of the customers and there is a team working away putting stuffing in the wrappers and pinching them closed. Like all of the food outlets in Turnstyle, Lisa’s is a to-go kiosk, but there is seating in the main aisle of the arcade. Lisa moved from Northern China 20 years ago and since then has been building a hospitality empire, with a fine wine and spirits shop in Massapequa, Panda Bubble Tea and investments in several restaurants in Flushing, Queens.
The Dumplings: The menu includes dumplings stuffed with: pork & Chinese cabbage; pork & green pepper; pork & sauerkraut; chicken and green peppers; beef & celery; beef & onion; shrimp, egg and chives; shrimp, pork and chives; and veggies – Chinese cabbage, mushroom, and carrot. All of the dumplings can be ordered steamed or pan-fried. The dumplings are served in clam-shell to-go containers with a small tub of dipping sauce.
I went with the classic, pan-fried pork and Chinese cabbage, which were delicious. The wrappers were medium thick, and so slightly chewier than pan-fried gyoza style wrappers, and were seared on just the bottom surface of the dumpling. The pork and cabbage filling was savory with a strong pork flavor and the filling was really juicy. Biting into these dumplings when they are first served risks having hot juice spilled on your chin or shirt.
My one complaint with Lisa’s is that the dumplings are a little pricey, 7 dumplings for $10.99. Maybe these prices are the result of inflation or the MTA trying to subsidize commuters by charging high rents for the kiosks in the arcade.
The Location: The Turnstyle Underground Market is an underground arcade of shops and food kiosks that stretches from the 59th street Columbus circle subway station to 57th street. These underground arcades are common in Asian cities and some of the ones I have visited in Seoul go for blocks and blocks in multiple directions from the subway station. NYC only has a few of them and the Turnstyle Market is one of the MTA’s latest efforts to create these types of commercial and eating spaces.
Corey’s Crafty Vietnamese Cuisine has been criminally overlooked by the Philly food press. As of 9/4/2023 it has 100% five-star reviews (on 129 reviews) on Google, but no articles have been written about the restaurant by the local papers, online news outlets or food blogs. Corey’s serves up some of the best Vietnamese food in Philadelphia, with amazing rice dishes, Pho, Banh Mi and Bun. The Com Dac Biet is sensational – it is a broken rice dish with your choice of a Vietnamese BBQ pork chop or boneless BBQ pork, with pate and shrimp and a fried egg that is cooked with insane technique. The vegan salt and pepper crusted tofu is another standout dish and is the best substitute for salt and pepper shrimp I have come across. They serve a house made chili oil that is blazing hot, but has layers of flavor, some of which comes from Kaffir lime, which brings bright and tangy notes. Chef Corey has a classical French cuisine background, having worked in top restaurants in Philly, and opened up his own venture in the penumbra of the pandemic.
The Dumplings:Corey’s menu has five dumpling options, each of which is served with its own sauce. The vegan Portobello Mushroom and Leek dumplings come with a soy balsamic vinaigrette over baby greens, and while the dumplings could stand alone flavor-wise, you will want to sop up all of the vinaigrette with the dumplings and eat the greens garnish to get every last bit of the sauce. This dish can be ordered with steamed or pan-fried dumplings.
I have also had the Golden Bags several times, which are deep-fried dumplings filled with shrimp and crab, wrapped in a pouch made of a wonton wrapper that has been tied shut with pandam leave strips. These dumplings come sitting on a sweet and spicy chili sauce. The shrimp and crab filling always tastes fresh and flavorful and the thin crispy wrapper provides a great textural contrast to the filling. One issue with this dish is that it is a little hard to get the chili sauce onto the dumplings, a side bowl of sauce that the dumplings could be dunked into would be welcome.
Another favorite is the Berkshire Pork and Shrimp Dumpling served with a roasted bell pepper sauce. The wonton wrapper on these dumplings is thicker, so when you order the deep-fried version, the wrappers are crispy, crunchy and bubbled like a cannoli shell. These dumplings have a seriously unctuous, savory pork flavor, typical of Berkshire pork, that is delicious, but I am never quite sure what the shrimp bring to the recipe. As with the other sauces, the roasted bell pepper sauce is a tasty compliment to the dumplings.
In addition to these dumplings, Corey’s serves Crispy Curry Chicken Dumplings and Beef Dumplings.
Deep Fried Berkshire pork dumplings, Portobello and Leek Dumplings and Golden Bags
The Location: Corey’s Crafty Vietnamese Cuisine is on the 1300 block of South Street in Philadelphia. Their web-site is pretty poor, lacks photos of a lot of the dishes and generally looks like it is from the early 2000’s. But ignore their weak web presence and go for the food.
Shibanuma Koikuchi Pure Soy Sauce (far right), has the clearest and thinnest color of the four sauces but has a bold long-lasting taste. This sauce is crafted by a 330 year-old, soy sauce maker, that uses traditional production methods, with wooden barrels that have been in use for decades for brewing. This sauce is recommended for sushi and sashimi, particularly white fish. This is an unpasteurized soy sauce so the enzymes in the sauce are still alive.
Junmai (Pure Rice) Gluten-Free Shoyu (second to right), is made from sake lees (residual yeast left over from sake production), rice, rice koji, salt and water. This rice ‘soy sauce’ is made by Taisho-ya Shoyu, an esteemed soy sauce and miso specialty maker in Shimane Prefecture. The company spent 10 years to develop this sauce as a gluten free substitute for soy sauce. This sauce is lighter bodied, like a pinot noir of soy sauce, and is delicious.
Kanro Soy Sauce (second to left) is a medium bodied sweet soy sauce that is darker and more like a table soy sauce. This soy sauce is brewed without salt, but instead with another soy sauce which has been previously aged for two and a half years in cedar barrels. This mixture is brewed and then aged for another two and a half years, bringing the total brew/aging time to 5 years. Kanro Soy Sauce is brewed by Igeta Shoyu, a century-old brewery in Shimane Prefecture, which has produced this sauce since 1912. This sauce is recommended for use as a dipping sauce or as a finishing sauce, not as a cooking sauce.
Smoked Marudaizu (Whole Soybean) Soy Sauce (far left) is thick and deep black in color and has a smoky flavor that is a quick intense hit of umami and smoky aroma. To achieve this flavor the sauce is smoked with cherry wood, rather by using an artificial smoke aroma liquid. Takasago has been making soy sauce in the Izumo region of Japan since 1877. This was my favorite of the four sauces and makes a great dumpling dipping sauce.
The owner of Dim Sum Garden claims to be the 5th generation descendent of the Chef who invented Xiao Long Bao (soup dumplings). This is obviously hard to verify, but online reviews are consistent in praising the soup dumplings. When we were there was a squad of cooks making fresh soup dumplings and the food flew out of the kitchen fast. Dim Sum Garden is a narrow restaurant that goes back deep into the block, with some tables next to the open kitchen, it sells beer and is also BYOB.
The Dumplings: Dim Sum Garden has a deep menu of dumplings and buns and we tried the pork soup dumplings, the fried pork soup dumplings, the sticky rice shumai and the pan-fried pork dumplings. Al of the dumplings were good and I am happy to report that the online reviews are correct, the soup dumplings were excellent. The wrappers were slightly chewy and kept the soup and filling in place, and not a single dumpling sprang a leak in the steamer we were served. The soup was fatty and luscious and the pork filling was delicious. These were some of the best soup dumplings I have had in Philadelphia so far.
But the clear star of the show was the pan-fried pork soup dumplings, the Sheng Jian Bao. Ever since I first had these buns at Yang’s Fried Dumplings in Shanghai I have been obsessed with finding good versions of these buns in the U.S. Dim Sum Garden has the best rendition of these buns I have found so far. Sheng Jian Bao are a type of soup dumpling with a slightly fluffy, semi-leavened dough wrapper. The buns are prepared by first steaming them and then pan frying the bottom of the bun until they are charred brown. The Shanghai style Sheng Jian Bao typically have thinner crispy wrappers, while versions from other regions have thicker bread-like wrappers. Most Shen Jian Bao served in the U.S. are not Shanghai style and the soup gets absorbed into the thicker fluffy wrapper, which is always disappointing. The version served at Dim Sum Garden have thin wrappers with lots of liquid soup inside. Instead of just being crispy on the bottom, their Sheng Jian Bao are entirely crispy and look like puffed up ping pong balls. This makes me think they prepare them by steaming them, pan frying them on the bottom and then quickly deep frying them. Putting aside the mechanics of preparation, these bao were fabulous, great charred dough flavor, lots of soup and really tasty pork filling.
The Location: Dim Sum Garden is at 1020 Race Street between 10th and 11th in Philadelphia’s Chinatown which is adjacent to the Convention Center.
The Philadelphia area mini-chain, Dan Dan, serves up Sichuan and Taiwanese dishes. Dan Dan spun off from Han Dynasty’s University City location in 2015, with a first location in Rittenhouse Square and then locations in Ardmore and Wayne. Dan Dan has a 10-seat U shaped bar on the ground floor, with three tables for two in the front window and a six-seat communal table behind the bar. The balcony has 30 seats and offers a view of the bar and the street.
The menu is heavy on dishes with chili oil. I tried the pork belly with sweet garlic chili oil which was insanely tasty. It is a cold dish of paper thin sliced fatty pork belly dressed with diced garlic, slivered scallions, sweetened soy sauce and chili oil. It is on the small plate menu but it is a large portion that could easily be shared by two. The waitress sort of tried to wave me off the dish by saying that some people don’t like the texture of the pork fat, but I thought the dish was excellent.
Dumplings: The menu includes several dumpling options: wontons in chili oil, dumplings in chili oil, and pot stickers (chicken or veggie). The difference between the wontons and dumpling in chili oil, both of which are stuffed with pork, is that the dumplings are dressed with sweetened soy and chili oil (probably the same sauce as the cold pork belly) and the wontons are dressed with black vinegar and chili oil and so have a sour vinegar edge. Because I ordered the cold pork belly first and was surprised with how large it was and couldn’t restrain myself from eating it all, I only got one dumpling order: the wontons in chili oil. The wontons were tasty and had lots of excess dumpling wrapper to carry the sauce, but the sauce was crazy spicy. The the dish was so burning spicy I couldn’t finish the wontons and my mouth was on fire for like an hour afterwards. The vinegar chili oil sauce was way more intense than the sweetened soy chili oil on the cold pork belly.
The location:Dan Dan is located near Rittenhouse Square, in Philadelphia. It is on 16th street just south of Sansom street.
Milan’s Pasta B Jinghua is the Italian outlet of Singapore’s well regarded Jing Hua Xiao Chi, which is known for its home-style Chinese cooking. Pasta B Jinghua’s first floor is dominated by an open kitchen that looks out onto the street and a dumplings making station with a hand cranked pasta machine, while the dining room is in the basement. The first time I was there the restaurant was playing an awesome playlist of roots reggae and ska: dumplings and ska is Dumpling Hunter heaven. The restaurant is 2 or 3 blocks from the Duomo and is a great alternative to the tourist Italian restaurants that populate the blocks around the Duomo. The homemade noodles with vegetables is a delicious vegan option, as is the homemade noodles with soup and vegetables. I ate at Pasta B Jinghua three times while I was in Milan and highly recommend it.
The Dumplings: Jing Hua Xiao Chi serves a wide array of dumplings but is known for its pan-fried pork dumplings, and Pasta B Jinghua seems to be replicating the original’s menu in Italy. The pan-fried dumplings have thicker wrappers than is typical for a pot-sticker or gyoza and the wrapper is closed with a single long pinched fold rather than a series of crimped folds and the ends of the dumpling are left open. They reminded me of mini English sausage rolls. The dumplings are filled with Chinese cabbage, Chinese chive, pork, shrimp and crab, although the pork flavor is most assertive. The flavor of these super juicy dumplings was sensational, one of the best pork dumplings I have tried. After my dinner at Pasta B Jinghua, I went back for lunch just to order these dumplings again.
The “Little juicy steamed meat dumplings “Syorompo” stuffed with pork” were Shanghai soup dumplings that had been overcooked to the point that the wrappers broke and could not contain the soup and meat filling. Although Pasta B Jinghua’s web site describes these soup dumplings as the stars of the menu, they were really disappointing. The vegetarian steamed dumplings are vegan and contain Chinese cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, kikurage mushrooms, carrot, fried tofu and vermicelli. This was a very good veggie dumpling with a strong cabbage flavor and savory umami from the mushrooms. The Gyoza Pie was a large, fried, flat disc shaped pie, with a flaky crust and the same filling as the pan-fried dumplings. The Gyoza pie was tasty but less juicy than the pan-fried dumplings and I preferred the dumplings.
The Location: Pasta B Jinghua is at Via Ulrico Hoepli, 3, near via Agnello, about two blocks directly north of the east end of the Duomo square. This square is one of the major tourist attractions in Milan and is surrounded by Italian restaurants catering to tourists. Pasta B Jinghua seems to attract patrons who know great Chinese food.
They have a slightly thicker crust than the average pan-fried dumpling and are folded to leave both ends open. Their bottoms are crisp fried to perfection and the juicy filling gushes into your mouth when you bite into them.
The search for the world's best dumplings 