Soup dumplings finally hit city
Thompson: Here’s where to stab, slurp and snarf xiao long bao.
I just ate one soup dumpling (xiao long bao).
I mean, it was audacious, really. I saw them there in the basket, steaming, like lovely bundles delivered by a tiny stork, and I wanted one. I didn’t want to wait. I wasn’t entirely sure of the best way to eat it. And I was worried the soup was going to be too hot and scald me. But I did it, anyway.
I just ate it. Without taking a picture or anything.
Had another member of the modern-day food media been around, jaws might have dropped.
The first and only time I had xiao long bao was back home in New York, many years ago, at some small, unglamorous place in Queens that’s likely long gone. I was with a co-worker and his friend, who was from Shanghai.
I had eaten many dumplings by then. The vast majority were pot stickers consumed in a dumpy Chinatown basement called Wo Hop between the hours of 1 and 3 a.m., where we’d loiter beneath fly-studded NoPest Strips before snarfing that wonderful night-capping sustenance of pork fat swathed in gummy carbs.
These were not high-quality dumplings — and never were — but were beloved for decades on Mott Street and still are. And I’d eat six right now if you plunked it down in front of me.
Xiao long bao were another animal altogether, thin-skinned purses gently swollen with light broth, the amniotic potion in which a small, seasoned serving of meat reposed.
I enjoyed it, but there was no hype, no clamoring (no Internet, in fact — not like there is today, at least — and I’m sure that’s something of a factor). It was not trendy. It was just normal dumplings, if new for me, another Asian-cuisine experience in Queens.
For Allen Lo, co-founder of Hawkers Asian Street Fare, soup dumplings make perfect sense.
“A lot of people like their food separate,” he says. “I’m the type of guy who likes to a little of everything on the spoon in one bite. The soup dumpling just does it for me. It’s so rich and savory, all the renderings get caught up in the dumpling and when you bite into it — it’s just amazing.”
So, how do they get the soup in there?
“It starts with a very rich bone broth that will turn into gel when you put it in the cooler,” Lo explains.
Once steamed, of course, the gel becomes the soup that affords this dumpling, if the skin is thin enough, a sensual jiggle when gently lifted from the basket with chopsticks. It’s downright sexy, in fact.
And if you like sexy Chinese food, you could do a lot worse than the Sichuan haven of Mills 50’s Chuan Lu Garden (1101 E. Colonial Drive in Orlando). I love Chuan Lu. It’s among my favorites.
Their soup dumplings ($4.95 for four) were tasty enough, but too thick to give me the Kardashian-level jelly for which I was ready.
This was a one-off visit, though. And honestly, you need to eat their fiery brand of Chinese, anyway, so if you want to give soup dumplings (which are not spicy) a try, go. If you’re like me, you’ll want to come back and work your way through the menu, which may be the largest I’ve seen outside of a New York Greek diner.
You can get Chuan Lu’s soup dumplings any day, anytime. Not so at Hawker’s.
For their soup dumplings, which at press time had only been on the menu about five weeks, you’ll need to head to the Windermere location (9100 Conroy Windermere Road, Suite 110). Brunch only. Why? Quality control says Lo.
“When we decided to showcase these on our menu, there were several months of testing,” Lo says. “And we’re still tweaking from time to time, making sure it’s perfect.”
Lo visits every weekend morning for a taste test before any are served.
“It’s a very tedious process,” Lo explains. “They have to be made fresh. Once they’re put in
the freezer, the skin can crack and you wouldn’t even know — and if that happens, when they get to the table there won’t be any soup in them.”
The Windermere location’s kitchen best serves the soup dumpling process. Right now, the others do not.
“These take a very large team,” Lo says. “They need to be wrapped and put in the steamer almost immediately and served right away once they are. There’s no hold over.”
The dumplings here ($10 for six) are a pork/crab hybrid, smaller and more delicate than the ones I found at Chuan Lu and each provides that alluring quiver when hoisted from the basket.
Servers are happy to demonstrate the proper xiao long bao technique — see menu illustration — but interestingly, Lo employs a different method.
“I prefer to bite a hole at the top and allow some of the heat out, but not lose any of the soup,” he imparts. “Then I’ll pour some of the soy-ginger-vinegar blend in there, so I’m putting the sauce right into the dumpling and once it gets cool enough, I’m taking it all in one bite.”
Lo sees that many people enjoy other strategies, perforating the dumpling and sipping the broth before eating, but doesn’t understand it.
“I just don’t know why you’d go through all the trouble of getting the soup into the dumpling and then breaking it out,” he says laughing. “But I’m not trying to offend anybody here.”
I have done it this way, as well, but more recently, after gauging the temperature with the back of my finger, I chose to live dangerously.
I put down my camera. And I ate.