Stargazy, Philadelphia, PA

Posted on September 3, 2024 by rundlea

Philadelphia’s Stargazy is styled as a classic east London pie and mash shop, and totally hits this mark, even down to the green parsley liquor sauce on the mash.  It is a small store front shop with counter service and 3 or 4 tables.  In addition to pie and mash, Stargazy sells Scotch Eggs, sausage rolls, Shepard’s pie, pasties and Bedfordshire Clanger (aka Trowley Dumpling).  On Fridays they have Fish and Chips, on Saturdays a Full English Breakfast and on Sundays they have a full Roast Dinner.  They also sell a small selection of imported English groceries and soda’s.  Unfortunately in my experiences going there, the east London classic, jellied eels, have not been available.

The Dumplings:   I have argued previously that pasties are a form of dumpling, and Stargazy offers a variety of pasty options including; the Classic Cornish, cheese and onion, the Priddy Oggy, Potato Masala and a Cheesesteak style.  On my latest visit I tried the Potato Masala pasty, which was essentially a vegetable samosa in a pasty format and baked rather than fried.  The pasty wrapper was buttery and flaky and the filling consisted of curry flavored potato, onion and peas.  This pasty was delicious and filling, and I am planning to work my way through the rest of their pasty styles. 

The Location:  Stargazy is at 1838 East Passyunk Ave in South Philly, just north of Miflin Street and next to Big Catch, which I have reviewed previously. East Passyunk is one of Philadelphia’s major commercial and entertainment corridors and a great place to bar hop and go out to eat.

Posted in Pasty, Philadelphia, Vegetarian, Veggie Dumplings | Leave a comment

Ramen Kuraku, New York, NY

Posted on August 17, 2024 by rundlea

Ramen Kuraku opened during the pandemic in a Columbia University building neat the 168th street medical center, making it one of the northern most ramen restaurants in Manhattan.  The restaurant offers shio black, miso and shoyu ramen broths, served spicy and non-spicy, with pork or chicken toppings.  They also serve curry ramen and abura soba, which is warm no soup ramen.  I have tried the shio black pork tonkatsu ramen, non-spicy, twice now and both times it was quite good.  They also have a variety of rice bowls and serve beer. 

The dumplings: Ramen Kuraku sells Takoyaki and a variety of dumplings: pork gyoza, chicken gyoza, ebi shrimp gyoza, Ika squid gyoza; and tofu vegetable gyoza. They are served steamed or pan-fried and the pan-fried versions come spicy and non-spicy.   While I have enjoyed the ramen, the dumplings I tried at Ramen Kuraku were disappointing.  The pan-fried gyoza needed more time on the pan, the bottoms of the gyoza were not crispy or charred enough, and the filling tasted a little metallic. The Takoyaki were not spherical and were flat on one side so that each one looked like half a takoyaki.  This shape is a sign that the restaurant is using frozen Takoyaki and they are probably throwing them in the fryer to heat them up and re-crisp them.  Takoyaki should be served blazing hot with lots of toppings, but the ones I got at Ramen Kuraku were not hot enough and needed more toppings. 

The Location:  Ramen Kuraku is located on Broadway between 165th and 166th streets, in the Washington Heights neighborhood.  It is near the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center 168th street A/C/1 subway stop.     

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

Dim Sum Bloom, (ne Shun Lee Cafe, and Shun Lee 98th), New York, NY

Posted on June 23, 2024 by rundlea

The food at Upper West Side’s Dim Sum Bloom was meh when I ate there, but the back story of the restaurant is interesting.  It originally opened, to great anticipation, as “Shun Lee Cafe” and then later changed its name to “Shun Lee 98th St”.  The opening announcement was greeted with joy by Upper West Siders, who though they were getting an outpost of the beloved Shun Lee restaurants (Shun Lee Palace on East 55th and Shun Lee West on west 65th). But the menu at Shun Lee Café/98th didn’t include any of the Shun Lee classics and the food was not nearly up to the quality of the OG Shun Lee’s.

It turns out that during the height of the pandemic an accountant working for the real Shun Lee had pitched the restaurant’s owners on opening a more casual dining version of the classic Shun Lee.  Apparently, the owner of Shun Lee initially bought into the concept and partnered up with the accountant, but then decided to back out of the arrangement and sold his ownership stake to the accountant.  But Shun Lee inexplicably agreed to license their name to the new venture, causing much confusion on the Upper West Side.  In the wake of customer confusion and disappointment, even though they apparently had a legitimate right to the name, the owners of Shun Lee Café/98th decide to change the restaurant’s name to Dim Sum Bloom.

The Dumplings:  As its name suggests, Dim Sum Bloom has a large dim sum menu with a lot of dumplings options.  We tried the Pork Soup Dumplings, the Pork and Shrimp Shumai, the Duck Dumplings, the Fried Fish Wontons, and the Honey Roast Pork Buns.  Overall, the dumplings were competently executed but were not great, and with so many excellent options for dumplings on the Upper West Side, a Dim Sum restaurant needs to be more than competent to be worth eating at.  The Fried Fisk Wontons were the one standout of the meal, and if I was dragged back to the restaurant I would order them again.  The wontons were filled with white fish, that had a mild, sweet fish flavor without being fishy, and were near perfectly pan-fried.   But with Moon Kee two blocks north, Happy Hot Hunan a few blocks further up on Amsterdam Ave and the newly opened Na Xiang Express on Broadway and 107th, there are some great dumpling options that I’ll go to instead of Dim Sum Bloom.

The Location: Dim Sum Bloom is on the corner of 98th street and Broadway in Manhattan’s Upper West Side neighborhood.    

Posted in Bao, Buns, Chinese, Dim Sum, Duck, Fish, New York City, Pan Fried, Pork, Soup Dumpling, Xiao Long Bao | Leave a comment

Moon Kee, New York, NY

Posted on May 30, 2024 by rundlea

Moon Kee opened back in October of 2023 selling Cantonese style food and dim sum.  The restaurant traces its origins to the owner’s father, who learned to cook in China in the 1950s and after moving to Hong Kong in the 1960’s, ran a street food stall.  These stalls played a quintessential part of Hong Kong’s food scene in the 1950s and 60s. The menu comes as a book of large plate dishes that include a smattering of American Chinese offerings and a large laminated card that lists the dim sum.  The owner claims that all of the dim sum are made in-house and they never use frozen food.  The steamed rice with Chinese sausage wrapped in a Lotus leaf was delicious. The rice had a mild tea like flavor from the leaf wrapper, with a slight pork flavor from the Chinese sausage and pork embedded in the rice. 

The Dumplings:  The dim sum menu has a lot of dumplings and rice rolls, with four dumplings in each order.  We got the pork soup dumplings, the pork and shrimp shumai, steamed pork and shrimp chive buns, and pan-fried pork dumplings.  The best of the bunch was the chive buns, which have a rice flour wrapper and a delicious chive flavor, think very mild onions with a touch of garlic and grassy herbal notes, in which I could just taste the sweet and savory flavors of the shrimp and pork. The weakest dish was the shumai.  They may have been overcooked, but the wrapper was too thin to hold the pork, shrimp mushroom together. They tasted good, but did not eat well.  The soup dumplings were quite good, sporting wrappers that kept their integrity and contained about a table spoon of tasty, fatty pork soup.  I thought the wrapper on the pan-fried pork dumplings were a little thick, and would have benefited from a stronger browning or charring.  But they were tasty and quite juicy.   

The Location:  Moon Kee is on Broadway between 100 and 101st, in Mahattan’s Upper West Side neighborhood.  You can reach it via the express 2/3 at 96th street or the local 1 train at 96th or 103rd streets.

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

3 Times, New York, NY

Posted on March 26, 2024 by rundlea

The origin story of 3 Times, a local NYC mini-chain of dumpling joints, is that an expat from Nanjing who was working as a tour guide in New York wanted a good Chinese restaurant to take his groups to. He had noticed the popularity of Din Tai Fung in other U.S. cities and wanted to adopt their ethos for quality for his own Shanghai-ese restaurant.  The origin story was not complete until he convinced a retired chef with 40 years of experience in Chinese restaurants in Shanghai and New York City to join him in the venture. 3 Times now seems to have about half-a-dozen locations in NYC. The one I tried on Amsterdam Ave was tiny, with counter service and maybe four tables, and was doing a steady stream of take-out business.

The Dumplings:  3 Times sells Pork Xiao Long Bao, Pork and Crab Xiao Long Bao and Chicken Xiao Long Bao and a variety of other dumplings including two of my favorites, the Shanghai style sticky rice with pork shumai and the pan-fried pork buns (Sheng Jian Bao).  The filling for Shanghai style sticky rice with pork shumai reminds me of Southern style dirty rice, mixed with pork and flecks of Chinese Sausage. These shumai are usually a flavorful bite, full of umami and sweet and sour notes from the sausage.  Unfortunately, the shumai at 3 Times had no flavor, I mean none, to the point where I thought I might have contracted COVID and lost my sense of taste.  I slurped down some of the soy dipping sauce just to convince myself my taste buds were intact and not virus ridden. Thankfully the pan-fired pork buns were much better, with great pork flavor, sweetness from the top of the bun and burnt caramelization from the crispy bottoms of the bun.  Unlike the pan-fried buns served at a lot of places, in proper Shanghai style the ones at 3 Times each contained a spoon full of soup. 

The Location:  3 Times’ Upper West Side location, on the west side of Amsterdam Ave between 107th and 108th street, is tiny and easy to miss.  It is near other Dumpling Hunter favs,  Happy Hot Hunan, Grain House and Naruto Ramen.          

Posted in Bao, Buns, Chinese, New York City, Shanghai, Sheng Jian Bao, Shumai | Leave a comment

Ba Le Bakery, Philadelphia, PA

Posted on March 3, 2024 by rundlea

There seem to be several Ba Le Bakery stores around the U.S. – California, Dorchester, Falls Church, Chicago and the one I hit in Philadelphia.  It is unclear whether they are related to one another.  The website for the Ba Le in Chicago suggests that there are many imitators of what they claim to be the original Ba Le Bakery. 

Philadelphia’s Ba Le Bakery sells a huge variety of prepared foods and a wide range of to-order Banh Mi sandwiches out of a jam packed, narrow space in a Vietnamese shopping plaza.  They have a variety of summer rolls, multiple types of sausage, ham products, pates, shrimp paste loafs, Vietnamese Beignets (which are vegan), bottled sauces, rice noodle rolls, pickles, deserts and bread rolls for sale.  They bake their Banh Mi rolls in house and their rolls some of the best in the neighborhood, which has close to a dozen places where you can buy Banh Mi.  They also carry vegan bologna and vegan pate so you could buy ingredients to make a vegan Banh Mi. They have no seating so everything is to-go.

The Dumplings: The Ba Le Bakery web site lists eleven kinds of dumplings, including several desert dumplings and Banh Gio, which are pyramid shaped rice flour dumplings stuffed with pork and wrapped in green banana leaves.  For this review I tried their steamed pork buns.  As usual for Vietnamese steamed buns these were fist sized buns made of fluffy, slightly sweet, bread stuffed with seasoned pork, a quail egg and Chinese sausage, with the unusual addition of peas and carrots.  The bun was really tasty, with the usual sweet and savory counter points from the bun bread and the pork, but I did not really notice the carrots and peas adding much to the flavor.  There wasn’t much Chinese sausage in the bun and I think it needed more to bring the slightly sour and spicy notes that make Vietnamese steamed buns flavor symphonies. A really good steamed bun, but not as good as those sold at BB Tee House.

The Location:  Philadelphia has a Little Saigon neighborhood that is centered on Washington Ave and runs from 6th street to 12th street and is anchored with shopping plaza’s on either end of the strip.  There is also a handful of restaurants and cafes that run north on 8th street from Washington Ave.  Ba Le Bakery is in the New World Plaza on 6th street and Washington Ave., which has several other foodie destinations including: an old school Dim Sum palace, a Paris Baguette and a Chinese supermarket.   

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Posted in Bao, Bao Battle, Philadelphia, Pork, Steamed, Vietnamese | Leave a comment

BB Tee House, Philadelphia PA

Posted on February 23, 2024 by rundlea

BB Tee House is a new Vietnamese café in South Philly specializing in bubble tea and Banh Mi sandwiches. They also sell Vietnamese coffee, prepared foods, frozen foods and Vietnamese pantry staples.  They have excellent Banh Mi sandwiches and Bao and really good summer rolls.  On any given day they have 4-5 varieties of summer roll, my current top pick contains Chinese sausage and omelet.    

The Dumplings:  BB Tee sells baked BBQ pork buns (Char Siu Bao) and steamed pork buns (Banh Bao).  The Char Siu Bao are flat slightly sweet, fluffy buns, about 4 inches across, and are packed with juicy sweet BBQ pork.  The buns are good, but between the sweetness of the BBQ sauce and of the bun, they are a little one note.  On the other hand the steamed pork buns are sensational, probably the best I have eaten (sorry Tran’s World Food Market). These fist size buns are filled with seasoned ground pork, a whole Quail egg and Chinese sausage, all contained in slightly sweet fluffy bun.  The sausage is hard and slightly chewy and is salty and sweet with some soy notes, while the ground pork has a mild, savory taste and then there is a whole boiled egg.  These buns are large and one bun is sufficient for a solid lunch.         

Banh Bao
Char Siu Bao
Banh Bao, on a plate by Dumpling Hunter

The Location:  BB Tee is located in Wing Phat Plaza on Washington Avenue between 11th and 12th street in South Philly.  Wing Phat Plaza is a shopping plaza anchored by a large Vietnamese supermarket, that has several Vietnamese restaurants (one of the highest rated Pho restaurants in Philly), a Dim Sum restaurant and an excellent Indonesian restaurant.     

Posted in Bao, Bao Battle, Philadelphia, Pork | Leave a comment

Stick to My Pot Potstickers

Posted on February 2, 2024 by rundlea

Stick to My Pot, Potstickers is a small dumpling restaurant on West 35th street near Penn Station.  The restaurant has a long wooden counter, with metal stools, along one side of the space, and counter service at the back, where you order and pick up your dumplings.  They serve five kinds of dumplings, braised pork bao, and a selection of small plates, including noodles with scallion sauce, scallion pancakes, spring rolls and pickled Napa cabbage.

The Dumplings:  The dumpling orders are available in three sizes, small at four pieces, medium at six pieces and large-at eight pieces and they can be ordered fried or steamed.  The choices are: the Classic –pork napa cabbage and chives; Shrimp – shrimp, water chestnut, and shepherd’s purse; Chicken – chicken, napa cabbage and cilantro; Vegan – pumpkin, edamame, shiitake mushroom and corn; and Wontons – chicken, spinach, shepherd’s purse, served with a sesame sauce. From what I saw of the preparation of my order and a few other orders, the dumplings are all cooked fresh while you wait. 

I know I should have gone for the classic fried potstickers, but the Dumpling Hunter is on a diet, so I went for the steamed Classic dumplings and the braised pork bao.  The pork dumplings were well seasoned, tasty and juicy, a good dumpling, but not outstanding.  The dumplings came with two thimble sized tubs, one with a soy-based dipping sauce and the other with hot chili oil.  It was impossible to dip the dumplings into the tiny tubs, so the only way I could enjoy the sauces was to bite off part of the dumpling and then pour a bit of the sauce into the dumpling. 

The white fluffy, open bao came with generous serving of pulled pork, that had been braised for six hours, preserved vegetables and cucumber.  The pork had a lot going on flavor-wise; sweetness, savory soy and slightly spicy. I would return to Stick to My Pot for this snack.   Top Tip on the Bao: eat this first.  The bao is served in a little paper envelope and mine kept steaming while I ate the dumplings.  So by the time I turned my attention to the bao, the fluffy bun was over cooked and had lost its ability to contain the pork.  As a result it was a messy, but very tasty snack.

The Location: Stick to My Pot Potstickers is on 35th street, between 7th and 8th avenue.  This the southern edge of Manhattan’s Garment District and is very close to Penn Station.  This restaurant will likely become my snack destination before riding the rails.

Posted in Bao, Buns, Chinese, Chive, Gyoza, New York City, Pork, Potsticker, Steamed | Leave a comment

Around the World in 50 Dumplings

Posted on January 26, 2024 by rundlea

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.    

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Shanghai Time, Manhattan, New York

Posted on December 18, 2023 by rundlea

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.

Posted in Bao, Buns, Chinese, New York City, Pan Fried, Pork, Potsticker, Rice Dumplings, Shanghai, Sheng Jian Bao, Shrimp, Shumai, Soup Dumpling, Sticky Rice | Leave a comment