I am heading to San Diego for a week and need some recommendations for Southern California dumpling spots. Any recommendations?
-DH
Ravioli are the dumplings of Italy, and since my wife is a vegan, we recently tired our hands at making vegan ravioli. We adapted the tofu ricotta filling recipe from an online recipe for vegan lasagne. The original recipe had too much lemon flavor, so here we have halved the lemon jest and juice used, we also tripled the amount of parsley from the original and added in spinach. This came out really good.
Department stores in Korea have amazing food courts in their basements, not like a mall in the U.S., but more like at Harrods in London. The Lotte Department Store has a food court that includes a high-end grocery store, prepared foods to-go and sit down stalls selling Korean, Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese meals. The grocery store has a lot of tasting stations where they give away free samples, they almost always have samples of little fried crab in spicy sauce, which are delicious. You should try the kimchi counter where they have dozens of different styles of kimchi and lots of samples and another must taste is the Hong Kong style Jerky counter where they have an amazing Bacon Jerky.
In the food court, the dumpling stall sells excellent dumplings to-go, perfect for a break from shopping, or if you are staying at the attached Lotte Hotel, perfect for an afternoon snack. The food court is really crowded during lunch and all day on weekends, so finding a seat can be a bit of a scrum.
The Dumplings: the dumpling stall sells pan fired pork/leek and kimchi/pork and steamed vegetable and steamed shrimp dumplings. The kimchi/pork dumplings are the best ones they do, just the right amount of spiciness and a great pork flavor. The dumplings are relatively large and flat, the dumpling wrapper is simply folded over a layer of filling, with very little crimping of the open edges, and then is pan fried on a griddle. The shrimp dumplings have a large, whole shrimp as the filling, with the tail of the shrimp sticking out of the end of the dumpling.
The Dipping Sauce: To-go packets of soy sauce.
Location: Basement of the Lotte Department Store in old down town Seoul, near Myeongdong.
I really wanted to give Shanghai Asian Cuisine a great review, both for the nostalgia I have for this spot and for the food, but they shorted us $20 on the change on our bill and when we asked about it, they gave us a ton of attitude. Shanghai Asian Cuisine used to be Shanghai Snack Bar, which was the first restaurant I tried in Chinatown when I moved to New York City twenty years ago. It was where I first fell in love with soup dumplings.
In summary, the Xiaolong Bao, Sheng Jian, scallion pancakes and lo mein we tried at Shanghai Asian Cuisine were really good and the service is really fast, but watch your change.
Fried tiny buns with pork
The China Pearl is an Dim Sum restaurant in Boston’s Chinatown that gets a lot of good reviews on Yelp. Overall I thought this place was just “eh”. The various fried dishes we tried were greasy and heavy, and for several of them the cook seemed to have a heavy hand with the MSG. On the plus side there were a lot carts circulating, and steady stream of food being offered to us. There is also a hot table that you can walk up to get plates of head-on salted shrimp and shell-fish. When I was there the clientele was probably 50-50 split between Chinese families and Caucasian tourists.
This Christmas my brother and I experimented with making North Carolina BBQ pork and kimchi dumplings. We thought we would take the current trend of adding kimchi to basically everything, and try and make Kimchi & North Carolina BBQ Pork-Chinese style dumplings. These dumplings came out great.
I wish I had pictures from this great little place in Toronto’s Chinatown. I went there for an afternoon snack and it was so good I went back for breakfast, well they open at 11 a.m., so more of a brunch. Despite this spot’s name, it has a pretty big menu of other dishes.
The Dumplings. The dumplings are pan fried in a cast-iron fry pan and at the last minute the cook adds a mixture of flour and water to the pan. This batter crisps up and joins all the dumplings together into a single, sheet of crispy goodness. They have pork and chives or leeks, shrimp dumplings and I think also some vegetable dumplings.
The Dipping Sauce. Bottles of soy and vinegar and a tubs of hot chili paste that you mix together to taste.
Location. 328 Spadina Avenue. It is on the east side of Spadina at the corner of Glenbaille Pl.
Vanessa’s Dumplings is becoming something of a cheap dumpling institution in New York City, with a location on Eldridge Street in China Town and a location on 14th street at the northern border of the East Village. Vanessa’s tag line is that they make Beijing Style Dumplings, although at this point in my dumpling eating career I am not yet sure what distinguishes Beijing Style.
On the right side of the restaurant is a long counter, behind which is the open kitchen with steamers and fry pans, and on the left side there is seating for maybe 40 people cramped together. To order you peruse the menus laying on the counter towards the back of the restaurant and place your order with the woman behind the counter who gives you a number. When your order is ready the number is yelled out and you get your food served at the counter on styrofoam plates, on a cafeteria tray. I have been there several times and the staff always seems to be kind of surly – maybe that’s part of the charm. Last time I was there I got the steamed shrimp dumplings (8 pieces), the fried pork buns (3 pieces), two orders of fried pork dumplings (4 pieces each) and a slice of sesame bread stuffed with roast pork, all for $9.75. They also sell frozen dumplings to-go.
The open kitchen at Vanessa’s
Bunch sells steamed buns so it is not really a dumpling spot, but buns are an allied snack and Bunch serves good ones. Bunch is located at Food Gallery 32, an Asian style food court, on 32nd street in Manhattan’s Korea Town. You can see into Bunch’s open kitchen/steam room from the street and watch the workers pulling fresh buns out of the huge steamers. They only do take out, but there is some seating on the second floor of the food court, which also has plenty of other take out spots with tasty Korean offerings.
The Buns. Bunch sells fist sized steamed buns stuffed with a variety of fillings. The bun bread is light and fluffy and they are generously stuffed. I tried the pork bun which was delicious and pretty spicy.
Steamed buns as Seen from the street.
If we begin with the definition that a dumpling is a sealed pocket of dough that encloses a savory or sweet filling, then I think the Pasty counts as the English dumpling. Pasties are baked and a lot larger than your typical Asian dumpling, but as you can see to the left, without a sense of scale, an uncooked Pasty looks a lot like a Chinese dumpling. Pasties are a sealed pocket of dough wrapped, traditionally, around a filling of diced beef, potato, turnip and onion, seasoned with salt and pepper. I have also seen them made with lamb and mint, all vegetables, chicken and mushroom, steak and Stilton and cheese and onions.
Vegetable Pasty
Bing Dumpling News
The search for the world's best dumplings 