HUNGRY GERALD

Gorgeous Granddaughter Sofia here, reporting live from Shanghai, China (in case you confused it with some other Shanghai). I’m here for a couple of weeks visiting a friend who was an exchange student at my high school this year. True to HG tradition she will be known here as EFM: Excellent Friend Marine.

Shanghai is an amazing modern city with many things to recommend it, the most important being (from an HG family point of view, anyway) the food. On one of my first days here, EFM, worried that I wasn’t getting enough to eat (from being invited to dinner at BSK and HG’s house she knows that my family does not take kindly to small quantities of food), took me to brunch at a restaurant near her family’s apartment named Paradise Dynasty. She ordered me a basket of soup dumplings (Xiao Long Bao). These soup dumplings were no ordinary soup dumplings however. They came eight to a basket, each a different flavor: original, garlic, luffa, foie gras, Szechuan, cheesy, crab roe and black truffle. The waitress was insistent on the correct order of how to eat them: clockwise around the basket. EFM was insistent on teaching me the correct way to eat them: biting the side to let the steam out and suck the soup out instead of biting off the top. Every single flavor was delicious, and I spent the rest of the day (which we spent at a wild animal park outside the city where I rode an elephant!) exclaiming on how amazing they were. My love for these multi-flavored dumplings gave EFM something new to worry about. Now she was concerned that my taste for soup dumplings was being corrupted by Paradise Dynasty’s modern, avant garde specimens. The next day, we took a trip to a restaurant (EFM scoffed when I asked her if it had an English name) in Yuan Garden which EFM claims everyone knows makes the best soup dumplings in Shanghai. Outside, people lined the benches, clutching take-out containers filled to the brim with dumplings. To get to the dining room, you have to go up several flights of stairs. When you’re seated, you are not given a menu; rather, there is a small card on the table that only has a few options. EFM ordered for the table: two baskets of soup dumplings (one crab and one pork), and the Mother Dumpling: a steamed crab bun, served in a special wooden container with so much soup in it you have to drink it with a straw. I, GGS, had found pure heaven and it came in the form of soup dumplings. The only downside to the experience was that my elder buddy HG couldn’t be there to experience it with me.

HG will whisper the name. Full House Cafe (in New York’s Chinatown — east side of Bowery at Hester Street). SJ was tipped to the restaurant by his Chinese dentist, a bit of a health freak, who raved about the clean and hygienic food. Other than this cleanliness-obsessed gentleman, It seems only a few people know about this restaurant even though it is serving some of the most exquisite Cantonese cooking HG has ever encountered. The ground floor restaurant is decorated in Hong Kong style. Ultra-modern. Flat screen TVs. Pink neon accents. It is quiet and uncrowded (most of their business seems to be the karaoke rooms on the upper floors). HG and BSK dined there a few times and were astonished, The scallion pancakes were crispy miracles of flaky pastry and slivered scallions. The crab meat and pork soup dumplings (xio lum bao) and chive dumplings were sublime. The Ma Po Tofu was powerful, redolent of Szechuan peppercorns and hot chili oil. And, the fish dishes. Wow. Filets of fish with yellow leaks. Minced flounder on a bed of baby bok choy topped with crab roe. Wonderfully light while intense in fresh sea flavor. HG and BSK also enjoyed extraordinary pork belly and pea shoots with garlic. HG is writing all of this with reluctance. Fears crowds and popularity.

Friends…When a Soup Dumpling calls, you might as well just give in, because really there is no escape. A Soup dumpling or a Xiao Long Bao to be proper, is a pork and crab meatball wrapped in a pleated wrapper of flour dough which is then steamed. The meatball is infused with a solidified ge’lee of broth, so that when it steams, this ge’lee reverts back to soup. When properly made (which is tough as a lot can go wrong! A soup dumpling requires MAXIMUM timing, freshness and technique) the end product hits the pinnacle of taste sensations; silken wrappers, rich soup, delectable meatball. When I first encountered this treat back in the late 90s at the famous Joe’s Shanghai, I went crazy. I found myself there at least twice a week with steamer after steamer arriving to fulfill my seemingly unquenchable Xiao Long Bao lust. I became an expert at deftly transporting the delicate dumpling from steamer to spoon without rupturing the delicate skin and losing the soup; I developed a methodology of cooling, adding ginger, red chile, malt vinegar and finally slurping that maximized my enjoyment — a methodology I adhere to and try to extort others to follow. Witness the family of Texans that told me to “mind your own business! We know how to eat!” when I tried to explain the ground rules of soup dumpling etiquette as they were attacking their treasures with forks and losing all the unctuous broth. In short I had a problem, and that problem took me a few years to finally reign it in. Which I did…Barely.

There is a new restaurant that has opened up on Bowery, right by the entrance to the Manhattan Bridge. I pass it every day. Right above the door is a grand billboard, a high resolution image of a perfect Soup Dumpling — white wrapper crested with the orange roe of a Hairy Crab. You can sense the soup bubbling inside, the heat and deliciousness coming together…

It took only two days. I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed my wife, Exquisite Maiko and headed for lunch at our favorite Soup Dumpling spot, Shanghai Cafe. I would have tried, and will try the new spot — but when the call of the dumpling was this severe, I could not risk disappointment.

When the first steamer basket arrived Exquisite Maiko and I sighed. Eight perfect dumplings encased in steam. I lifted the first up, gently placed it on my spoon and nipped off the top of the dumpling. Using a spoon (which you have to ask for!) I dripped some vinegar and shredded ginger into the center of my dumpling. Preparing myself for the scalding, delectable heat, I then slurped up the broth. With something that can only be described as sensual, that rich broth flooded my senses…I took a breath and then devoured the dumpling skin and the interior meatball. Silken. Rich. Layers of pork flavors mingling with the heady inclusion of crab and that final tang of vinegar. A perfect bite. A bite for the ages.

The soup dumpling had called. We had answered. Let the obsession roll once again!