Taking a bite out of Shanghai
SHANGHAI, China -- With a line 30 deep, I knew Yang's Fry Dumpling had to be good.
I was wrong. It was great.
You don't come to Yang's for the ambience unless you like your restaurants crowded with communal tables, overlit with fluorescent bulbs and decorated with nothing more than a "Kill Pest" bug light on the white tile wall.
No, you come for the sheng jian bao, pan-fried dumplings filled with a magical mixture of pork and -- here's the part I really love -- soup. Shanghai is famous for its soup dumplings, and sheng jian bao are a version of this delectable treat.
From my seat by the kitchen, I peeked through the window to watch an assembly line of half a dozen workers in surgical masks crank out countless sheng jian bao. Some of the cooks furiously rolled little circles of dough, while the others stuffed them with pork and gelatin before pinching them shut, sprinkling them with sesame seeds and sending them into a giant pan, where the frying and steaming melted the gelatin into a savory broth.
I soon found out that eating sheng jian bao is like eating tacos while wearing oven mitts. It's a messy affair that often ends with soup dribbling down your chin and sesame seeds plastered to your lips.
My fine motor skills were on par with a toddler as I used my chopsticks to puncture a hole in the doughy casing and suck out the soup. The Chinese woman sitting across from me wasn't much better at it. She gave an apologetic giggle as the juice from her dumpling shot across the Formica table and landed in my bowl of vinegar dipping sauce.
Yang's has two locations in Shanghai, and they're inexplicably located next to each other, like Shanghai's version of Chicago's La Pasadita. The addresses are 54 Wujiang and 60 Wujiang Rd., just off Nanjing Road, the city's main shopping drag.
You won't need a lot of money -- four dumplings cost a mere 65 cents -- but you will need plenty of napkins.