Rather than dumplings in broth, xiao long bao have soup inside the dumpling. Molten-hot, magma soup. To eat them, you carefully pluck them up with your chopsticks, nibble a little hole towards the top of the wrapper, blow on the liquid inside, and then carefully drink the soup out of the middle and eat the dumpling.
Watching someone eat soup dumplings is very... intimate. Maybe that sounds weird, but watch it, and you'll know what I mean.
I've heard that some places make gigantic soup dumplings, like the size of a burger, where the only goal is the soup inside. For the dumpling wrapper to be strong enough to hold that much liquid, the wrapper itself is tough and doesn't taste very good. After slurping up the insides, you discard the dumpling shell.
Not these little dumpling babies from Lin Long Fang. These are the size of a silver dollar, and the dumpling wrappers are delicious. I ordered crab dumplings, and they were awesome. I got a dozen dumplings in two steamer baskets and some vinegary, ginger dipping sauce for ¥99 (about $15).
The filling had a yellow tint. My hypothesis is that they mixed the crab tomalley into the filling. Tomalley is the hepatopancreas (aka guts) of the crab and hard-core crab eaters LOVE it and call it "the mustard." I've never had enough guts (no pun intended) to scoop it out and try it when I've eaten whole crab in the past, but I liked this filling a lot. It was very rich and "crabby." I got some shell fragments in several of the dumplings. I'm not sure if this was intentional for texture, but I doubt it, and I spit the shells out.
I was worried that it would be rude to pick crab shells out of my mouth. And I didn't have a napkin of side plate to put the shells on. But one of the bizarre and sort-of refreshing things about being in China, is that nothing seems to be rude. I made a little pile of spit-out crab shells, and no one seemed annoyed or irritated.
I found the restaurant after a little research. It's tiny and non-descript and feels very undiscovered. It was about a two and a half mile walk from where I was staying. Walking five miles for soup dumplings? Well worth it. Priorities, people.
The woman taking orders didn't speak any English, but she had a sort-of-English menu for me to look at. I picked crab, and she wrote "99" down on a scrap of paper. I didn't know how to order water or anything to drink, so I just drank from the water bottle I had with me. The whole restaurant seats about 15 people, and you can watch ladies make your soup dumplings. They are astonishingly fast for how delicate and precise the process is. They make their own dough, cut it, roll it out, fill it and pinch it off and put it in a steamer basket. When a basket is full, it goes back to the kitchen to be steamed, and comes out about five minutes later.
My Shanghainese dumpling pilgrimage has just begun.
More to come.
Lin Long Fang
10 Jianguo Dong Lu,
near Zhaozhou Lu
建国东路10号，
近肇周路
I found the restaurant after a little research. It's tiny and non-descript and feels very undiscovered. It was about a two and a half mile walk from where I was staying. Walking five miles for soup dumplings? Well worth it. Priorities, people.
The woman taking orders didn't speak any English, but she had a sort-of-English menu for me to look at. I picked crab, and she wrote "99" down on a scrap of paper. I didn't know how to order water or anything to drink, so I just drank from the water bottle I had with me. The whole restaurant seats about 15 people, and you can watch ladies make your soup dumplings. They are astonishingly fast for how delicate and precise the process is. They make their own dough, cut it, roll it out, fill it and pinch it off and put it in a steamer basket. When a basket is full, it goes back to the kitchen to be steamed, and comes out about five minutes later.
My Shanghainese dumpling pilgrimage has just begun.
More to come.
Lin Long Fang
10 Jianguo Dong Lu,
near Zhaozhou Lu
建国东路10号，
近肇周路
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