Late last week I went on a dumpling tour in Shanghai, with Andrea Nguyen. Andrea is the author of Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, a very well-received guide to Vietnamese cooking; she also has a great website and blog here. After a brief stint in Saigon writing a piece for my favorite food magazine, she has been traveling across Asia eating and researching her next book. Shanghai was the last stop on her tour, and she wanted to taste the best xiaolongbao the city has to offer.

One thing that is both telling about the restaurant market here is that xiaolongbao is something uniquely Shanghainese, but the best examples of it can be found at a restaurant that isn’t from Shanghai. I was hoping on this jaunt we would find some better iteration of the soup dumpling on the street; a dumpling that could userp the best xiaolongbao crown from (my current favorite) Ding Tai Fung. This Taiwanese chain is a study in consistency; the kitchen is clean and the flavors and presentation are always precise. Here’s a photo of our simple pork dumplings, which are a whopping RMB 55 per steamer (Note: I am about to disrupt the austere beauty of my blog for your benefit. From now on, at least from time to time, I will include some images. Apparently words are not enough these days.)

These formidable bao met their foe on Huanghe Lu, at local favorite Jiajia Tangbao. See their sloppier rendition of the soup dumpling below.

Once again, I thought DTF was markedly better than Jiajia or any other xiaolongbao I've had on the street. Perhaps not six times better - as the price would suggest - but there is a large difference in the two as you can see simply from looking at the photo. DTF's have a perfect skin - translucent and paper-thin, it sags from the weight of the soup yet manages to hold it all in until it meets your mouth. Jiajia's skin is thicker and more glutinous, and some of the dumplings were very haphazardly constructed (notice the upside-down guys on the left side). This might have been due to the fact that during the lunch rush, a man who wore no uniform who didn't look like kitchen staff was also furiously folding - poorly. Maybe he couldn't afford his lunch and was working it off instead. Jiajia's also had less soup, and were a shade salty; Andrea said they were "homey" and "comforting" and this was certainly true: I can't imagine creating anything like that first photo in my own kitchen. Jiajia's didn't disappoint, and at a fraction of the price they were good. But they can't punch in DTF's weight class.

Below is an image of beautifully wrapped celery and pork dumplings that can be found on Wulumuqi Lu near Fuxing Lu, just beside the wet market. We ate these too, for a taste of something different. They are lighter than xiaolongbao, with a pleasant greenness imparted from all that celery. The skin is thicker and a good deal stickier. But they sure look pretty.