There may not be any correlation between the degree of leavening and whether they are fried “right side up” or “upside down.” They nearly all seem to be fried “Suzhou style” today.
Shen’s comment about the frying style of SJB comes at 21:00 in the midst of the Eileen Chang memorial banquet in the vide below, but the whole documentary is interesting.
http://english.cntv.cn/program/documentary/20121013/100022.shtml
Just tried the SJB (#5 on the menu) at Dumpling kitchen. There was no soup whatsoever in any of the ones we got. Should we have sent them back? The wrapper had an odd sweetness. The filling was tasty. But they were not SJB because there wasn’t even the hint of soup.
Consensus on the curent best SJB in SF?
That’s unfortunate. I haven’t been back to Dumpling Kitchen for awhile but I do remember there being at least some soup in the SJB the last time I had it there. Would also like to know where to get some good SJB in SF.
SJB is normally not my thing, so I don’t have many points of reference. Is the meatball and soup supposed to be very salty? I found Shanghai Bistro’s version very much so, which kinda took attention away from other qualities its supposed to have.
Those are pretty salty, and they don’t add as much Shaoxing wine or other seasonings to my taste. I remember the liquid inside their XLB being salty and oddly clear, with floating white things (protein, fat, scum?).
What appeals to me about SJB is the contrast of crunch to savory slightly wet dough, kind of like a chewier version of the bread on top of French onion soup.
Dumpling Zone, across from Laguna Honda in SF, opened a few weeks back by former Dumpling Home employees. SJB are top form— full spoonful of soup, balanced pork broth (no domination of sweet, smokey, salty, or fatty elements). The fried side was light brown and blistered, easy to grab with chopsticks and bite without sliding across the room.
Oh cool, looks great. I drove by that place a few times and was wondering if it was worth a stop.
Looks good, can definitely see the Dumpling Home lineage there!
The rare lack of a line at Dumpling Kitchen (Ed. Taraval and 30th ) enticed me in today.
The SJB were wider and heavier than what’s becoming popular and the dough was lovely: chewy and neither fluffy/sweet nor a flavorless shell. I don’t know if it’s the cooking oil or the dough itself that gave the dough complexity, but I was pleased by flavors that went beyond the simple burnt toast I’m finding common elsewhere.
A tuft of dough in the center struck me as excessive at first, but it tasted great and kept soup from evacuating onto my spoon. Nice to enjoy a mix of dough/meat/soup in each bite.
These restaurant names is annoying. They all come with very generic names- Dumpling Kitchen, Dumpling Kingdom, Dumpling Depot, Dumpling Zone, Dumpling this, Dumpling that, that I can never remember which one is which. After looking up the address of 19th and Taraval, I am still drawing a blank whether I’ve been there. 
Thanks for the report.
Hardly a fried/steamed/fried/whatever dumpling dilemma:
I love Tommy’s, but only at Beverly & Rampart.
Ha, I literally had to look up the restaurant name as I made that write up two blocks away. It’s the Taraval and 30th (edited above) location and they have another location in the Castro. The former owners have Dumpling Specialist closer to 19th.
Where was this please.
Its a new place called Mini Potstickers on 22nd and Irving that @Hyperbowler mentioned in the Regional Chinese openings.
I was too skeptical to get some, but may next time the kids are with me.
I wonder if these are pan fried XLB or if there’s something more to the dough. I seem to recall a Chowdown (Little Shanghai?) where a place swapped out their normal SJB with a pan fried XLB— not very good, but surprising in that it survived the cooking process.
These are more in line with what I typically ate for breakfast in southern Taiwan – they’ve gotta be hefty!
