Shanghai: a xiao long bao report card

I recently wrapped up a 30-day visit to Shanghai in which I couldn’t resist repeated indulgence in my passion for xiao long bao. I didn’t consciously plan a systematic review of the state of the dumpling art, but there were XLB vendors of repute that I had to track down simply because I knew they were there, and there were other places I stumbled across that I couldn’t turn away from without vetting. All told, I had xiao long bao at least 15 times, at 12 different venues. If you are wondering where Din Tai Fung is in all of this, I have discussed my reaction to DTF in the past in this and other forums; in a nutshell, I found DTF’s XLB to be very good, roughly the equal to Jia Jia Tang Bao’s, but so grossly over-priced by local standards that I found no reason to return to DTF on this trip.

Here is my October, 2008, Shanghai xiao long bao report card:

A+

De Long Guan -- Jiangxi Lu

De Long Guan made its way to the head of the class by shamelessly pandering to my memories of my first xiao long bao 16 years earlier. This Proustian feat was described in an earlier post and won't be repeated here.

A

Jia Jia Tang Bao -- Huanghe Lu
Jia Jia Tang Bao -- Liyuan Lu

Despite my preference for De Long Guan's evocative product, Jia Jia Tang Bao must still be considered the King of Xiao Long Bao in Shanghai, because the former's smallness of scale and its somewhat daunting premises make it unlkely to assume the role of a destination restaurant. Jia Jia, on the other hand, has its small red-hatted armies of ingenues (see the picture art the top) well trained to turn out sizeable quantities of baozi with the speed and precision of DTF's operating theater personnel.

The xiao long bao at Jia Jia are of uniformly thin skin, carefully wrapped and filled with solid and "soup" fillings of complexity, consistency and flavor. I didn't detect a whit of difference between the two locations of Jia Jia, or between their current locations and the former location on Yunnan Nan Lu.

B

Long Pao Xie Huang Xiao Long (Qibao)
Nanjing Tang Bao (Shouning Lu)
Shang Wei Guan (Xiangshan Lu)

Of these three, Shang Wei Guan was the most frustrating. It had been given the highest rating for taste by dianping.com reviewers of any XLB specialist that had a significant number of reviews, and was the hardest for me to track down, which I did on my last day in Shanghai. The XLB had amazingly thin wrappers, the thinnest I have encountered in years, but they were a bit sloppy in construction, and also tossed casually in the steamer so that they were randomly scattered in the long rather than than nicely arranged (one was actually lying on its side). Even so, I would have ranked them higher if the soup had had the intensity of De Long Guan’s. Long Pao Xie Huang Xiao Long in Qibao (on the Qibao Old Street) and Nanjing Tang Bao on Shouning Lu (a pretty good little food street itself) were two I stumbled across. They both came close to Jia Jia perfection, failing primarily in the flavor density of the broth.

C

Fu Chun Xiao Long (Yuyuan Lu)
Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou Dian (3rd Fl)
Shanghai Lao Cheng Huang Miao (Haichao Lu)
Yi Pin Guang Tang Bao (Guangyuan Lu)
90 Duolun Lu Tea House

Fu Chun Xiao Long also was something of a disappointment, primarily because of my expectations; it had been mentioned in the same breath as Jia Jia Tang Bao and De Long Guan in a 2007 “Best of” listing by dianping.com but it fell short of the other two, in my estimation. In particular, the wrappers were not only thick, but constructed with blow-holes on top, like the version the Taiwanese used to make and top off with a pea.

For the Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou Dian (or whatever it’s called these days) this was the first time I’d tried the third floor XLB, though I have noted elsewhere that the second floor and the ground floor takeout XLB have fallen far from the pinnacle of excellence of the Nanxiang’s heyday. I had heard various reports on whether the third floor XLB were better than downstairs, and I found that they seemed to be a bit fresher, but with little other discernible difference. This may be due to the fact that the third floor has its own production crew and facility, while the other two levels get theirs mass produced in the highly visible ground floor kitchen, where the stockpiling is obvious to anyone who has stood in the takeout line.

Shanghai Lao Cheng Huang Miao is a chain of restaurants featuring Shanghai small eats; there happened to be a branch within short walking distance of my hotel so I was able to enjoy passable XLB for breakfast at will. They were not, however, of destination quality.

Yi Pin Guan Tang Bao is a venue I discovered when I was giving some visiting friends a walking tour of the French Concession area and they expressed a desire to try xiao long bao. Following my instincts, I left Hengshan Lu and wandered in the direction of Jiaotong University and sure enough, found Yi Pin steaming XLB on the street. They were great if you are there and hungry, but, like Lao Cheng Huang Miao’s, not something to go out of your way for.

“C” is probably a generous rating for the XLB at the tea house at 90 Duolun Lu (I never caught the actual name). They were oversized and bland, but came as an accompaniment to a lovely glass of longjing tea and I can’t think of a nobler role for xiao long bao.

Not Rated

De Xing Guan -- Zhonghua Lu

De Xing Guan’s xiao long bao are not orthodox xiao long bao, being oversized and of a different, though satisfying flavor in the filling. De Xing Guan has been around and revered for its tasty food for so long that event though what they dish out is, for lack of a better description, tantamount to a Shanghai version of a New York soup dumpling a la Joe’s Shanghai, they can call it anything they want.

De Long Guan xiao long bao: a Proustian straight shot to 1992

I just wrapped up a month-long stay in Shanghai, no small part of which was devoted to checking out the state of xiao long bao and other small eats. I hit a total of 12 different xiao long bao venues; I'll preview the bottom 11 in a subsequent post, but Number 1 deserves its own paean.

I had my xiao long bao epiphany in early April, 1992, at Shanghai's Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou Dian, the place that put xiao long bao on the map and established what was indisputably the gold standard for the noble dumpling. The timing of my visit was fortuitous, because less than two weeks later the Nanxiang was shut down for extensive remodeling and reconfiguration as a more tourist-oriented venue, a metamorphosis that seemed to trigger an inexorable decline in the quality of the xiao long bao served there.

Since my first xiao long bao experiences, I've been hunting down the best XLB I could find wherever I happen to be, and for the last couple of years have been flying the flag for Jia Jia Tang Bao as the best Shanghai had to offer. Visits to the two current Jia Jia locations earlier on this trip did nothing to dissuade me from that opinion, but a subsequent visit to De Long Guan did.

In truth, I had begun to doubt my memory of what I had been so excited about 16 years ago. Was I chasing a phantom, a platonic ideal that didn't exist? Not in the least, it turned out: what the woman at De Long Guan set before me was nothing less than a Proustian straight shot back to 1992 in the form of six precious dumplings. The very size seemed right for once, a millimeter of two smaller in diameter than prevails today. The wrapper was as thin as anybody else's, and the solid filling perfectly chewy, not grainy. But it was the intensity of the “soup” that brought back the flood of memories. It was an intensity that some might fault as too salty, but in reality it was the right partner leading in the irascibly Shanghainese dance of salty and sweet that serves so well to corral and deepen the flavor of a complex medium. I ordered a second steamer to make sure my taste buds weren't playing tricks on me, and the magic remained. I'll be visiting De Long Guan again before I leave town, and praying it will be there when I come back in a year's time. It's a hole-in-the-wall that certainly looks like its been there forever.

De Long Guan (德笼馆)
473 Jiangxi Zhong Lu nr. Nansuzhou Lu

Paris Hilton's xiao long bao style

"Celebutante" Paris Hilton just hit Shanghai like a typhoon for an MTV event and the local PR folks immediately set the staqe for her to display her xiao long bao eating technique at the very shrine to XLB, the Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou Dian.

STEP 1: Lift it from the steamer and dip it in vinegar.

Not bad Paris, but it's traditional to use chopsticks....

Step 2: Place it on your spoon and nibble delicately at it.

You've got it, girl. Sometimes, though, using the fingers just won't do:

For the record, Paris Hilton stayed at the..... Hyatt???

IHT journalist's Shanghai xiaolong bao quest.

The International Herald Tribune has a nice, perceptive article about xiao long bao and its aficionados, including a nod to "the notoriously fussy eaters at the U.S. website chowhound.com". Its travel writer, Daisann McLane, has obviously paid attention to the discussions on that forum (some instigated or propelled by yours truly). I don't agree that Din Tai Fung's XLB are more worthy than those of Jia Jia Tang Bao (which seems to have lost points for no longer being an out-of-the-way funky dive, I found it to be overall a fair and intelligent review of some of the options. She even called out a place new to me (Fu De, in Hongkou) which I've put on my list for my next trip to Shanghai.