Xiaolongbao x 2
Researching the food scene in San Francisco, specifically Asian food, I learned that people here are proud of a few things like Shanghaiese restaurants and Burmese restaurants, while other areas are lackluster, e.g. ramen.
I decided to go to a couple of the recommended Shanghai restaurants to try their xiaolongbao. These restaurants are a couple blocks from one another, in the Outer Richmond neighborhood. It was fun taking the bus there, since as the street name changed from Eddy to Turk, and then to Balboa, there was basically a line in the air where it turned from totally blue sky to totally overcast and chilly. San Francisco's microclimates are amusing.
I expected Outer Richmond would have more going on, since it does have two of the city's main xiaolongbao restaurants. But it was pretty quiet, as you can see from this picture of the front of Shanghai House, the first restaurant I visited.
Not that there wasn't interesting stuff going on. Here's "Americana Grill," which serves Italian and Vietnamese food.
Now for the xiaolongbao. They were good, not great. Like, if I were eating these in Eindhoven I'd think I was in heaven. But I'm in San Francisco now.
Between the two, I liked Shanghai House's less. The skin was too sweet, and there was too much dough gathered at the top of each dumpling. Meanwhile, the bottom of the dumplings got soggy, a symptom of not enough gluten development (i.e. not chewy enough). So by the time I got around to eating the second half of the dumplings (which was only like 2 minutes after the steamer came out), the fillings fell out as you pulled the xiaolongbao out of the steamer. The ginger was nicely julienned for the vinegar, though.
Shanghai Dumpling King was the other restaurant I tried. The taste had a better balance of savory with a hint of sweet, and the skins were nice with that bit of chewiness. The main drawback, though, was that the fatty juice inside was like biting into an oil slick. And I wish they could have paid more attention to the ginger in the vinegar - it looks like someone hacked at the ginger root with a pair of Crayola scissors (see below).
A steamer of 12 xiaolongbao is $5.95 at Shanghai House, and $5.50 at Shanghai Dumpling King.
