“It takes about four or five years to become an expert.”
So pronounced Phillip Ye, dumpling maven at the Langham Xintiandi Shanghai Hotel, who rolls dough and grinds pork every day to make xiaolongbao, the soup dumpling that Shanghai is famous for.
He’s telling this to a group of bumbling amateurs in the kitchen of the Langham. (Reporters.) And, no, we don’t have four or five years. More like 45 minutes.
With Ye is Tony Su, the chef at Tang Court, Langham’s fancy, Shanghai/Cantonese restaurant. “It’s the same process as learning to write,” Su adds. (Both spoke through a translator.) “You start up and with patience you get better. When making the dough, if it’s not refined enough it shows up when you eat it.”
The dough is nothing more than water, flour and salt. It is rolled into a long thin log and cut into gnocchi-sized globs which are pressed into flat circles.
Each circle is then filled with minced pork and folded up into a little ball.
“But wait!” you say. “Where does the soup come in?”
The soup is already in the minced meat. The soup stock — cooked for hours before considered acceptable — is mixed with minced pork and turned into a paste. When it gets hot, the liquid separates from the meat.
The Langham Xintiandi Shanghai (xintiandi.langhamhotels.com, 99 Madong Road) has offered this course to corporate clients during the three years they’ve been open. But as Langham looks to offer more leisure options, they’re also providing it to guests. (Classes can be arranged for $58 per hour per person but different rates apply to groups — visitors should contact the hotel.) It would be an understatement to say we are not as successful as Ye. Our dumplings look like bulbous white onions with a stalk of pork shooting out of their heads.
“They’re rustic,” one colleague happily pronounces of these ugly dumplings.
At least when these deformities come out of the steamer eight minutes later they taste good.
Even if you don’t take Langham’s crash course, there’s no way that you can set foot in Shanghai and not experience xiaolongbao bliss.
Just a block or so away from the Langham is Din Tai Fung (123 Xing Ye Road) which serves fancier soup dumplings than most are prepared for: some have black truffle in them.
Offered with each menu is a handy (and illustrated) guide to consuming the soup dumpling:
Step one: dip it in vinegar and ginger.
Step two: poke a hole through it with a chopstick.
Step three: allow the soup to drain into your spoon. (Personally, I prefer to suck the soup directly out of the dumpling.) The chicken or the pork dumplings with truffles might distract from the rest of the menu, but one shouldn’t skip items like spicy miso sauced noodles and fried pork chop with rice.
A more traditional and downscale dumping experience is Lin Long Fang (10 Jiang Guo St.). The room is not much to look at: white walls, long wooden tables, stools to sit on. Near the doorway is the, uh, open kitchen — which is four women covered in flour who are patiently rolling dough into xiaolongbao.
But this only adds to the experience when they unceremoniously place bamboo steamers of pork, crab, and egg and pork (my favorite) in front of you.
Almost as good as the dumplings are the other noodle dishes. The beef noodle soup comes with ground beef on top as tender and rich as a Bolognese sauce — minus the cream. (When the bill was tallied for 12 people it came to $40, with lots of leftovers.) For those looking for novelty, Nan Xiang Xiaolong Mantou (85 Yu Yuan Road) offers dumplings so oversized that the soup must be sucked out through a straw. (A Shanghai friend, however, advises just sticking with their normal xiaolongbao.) Of course, not everybody likes their dumplings steamed. Just a block or so from the People’s Square is Yang’s Dumpling (97 Huang He Road), which offers its big glutinous balls of dough, meat and soup oily and crispy. Four come in an order for 6 yuan (about $1).
Yang’s is on Huang He Road, a food heavy side street near the Shanghai Museum (which looks like a bamboo steamer!). And if you’re into the fried stuff, should you pass the venders frying scallion pancakes do not deny yourself. At about 50 cents, it is the cheapest scallion pancake you’ll ever have — and the best. Even the most determined noodle nuts out there can’t live by xiaolongbao alone — but after eating dozens over the course of a few days, one certainly feels like one might die from them.
At least you’d die with a smile on your face.