Sheng jian bao in the Bay Area

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.

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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.

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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!

2 posts were split to a new topic: Dumpling Zone (Forest Hill SF)

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.


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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. :rofl: Thanks for the report.

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Hardly a fried/steamed/fried/whatever dumpling dilemma:

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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.

@hyperbowler Minipotstickers and jianbing.

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Where was this please.

Its a new place called Mini Potstickers on 22nd and Irving that @Hyperbowler mentioned in the Regional Chinese openings.

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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.

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These are more in line with what I typically ate for breakfast in southern Taiwan – they’ve gotta be hefty!

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We ate at the new Special Noodle Richmond in the Pacific East Mall [99 Ranch Mall]. We found they put a ton of sugar in their food - even the XLB were sweet(!). The SJB filling was too sweet altho not as sweet as the XLB, but what I did like was that the dough was the thin, crisp pastry dough, not the puffier yeasted dough. I was disappointed we didn’t like their fillings more.

Special Noodle Richmond/Pacific East Mall
3288 Pierce St., C136 (facing 99 Ranch Market), Richmond, CA

More traditional are the XLB and SJB at:
Xiang Yuen Xiao Long Bao Restaurant, 1688 E. 14th St., San Leandro, CA. A Chinese waiter recommended it to us, but I had a hard time finding it because NOBODY uses its actual name, LOL. Apparently everybody just calls it the Xiao Long Bao Restaurant, and even their large street sign reads that way. The handmade XLB were terrific, but the kitchen fries the SJB a little too dark for our taste.

This is a Shanghainese restaurant, and we had problems with the staff. Most of them actually did not speak much English - it’s possible that situation has improved over the last 2 yrs, because the translations on the menu weren’t that helpful. In fact there are two dishes almost identical in description and name, which the staff consistently mixed up in our orders on the three visits we made. The dishes are quite different, and unfortunately one we liked but one we don’t.

After a while we got tired of the hassle and started going elsewhere. SJB are more common now then they were a few years back, fortunately.

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Xiang Yuen Xiao Long Bao Restaurant is one of our regular haunts (at least it was a year back).
As you say, their XLB are almost always damn good and the Sheng Jian Bao not as much.
They also do some Szechuan Style Dishes pretty well.
Other Dishes we like there:
Pork Wonton with Spicy and Peanut Sauce
Beef Sandwich (AKA Taiwanese Beef Rolls)
Shanghai Style Bean Curd (Cold Gluten Puff with Peanuts and Cloud Ear)
Sliced Beef in Chili Sauce( 夫妻肺片)
Stewed Meat Ball in Brown Sauce
Shredded Pork in Fish Garlic Sauce ( Fish-Fragrant Pork Slivers /Yu Xiang Rou Si)
Shanghai Chow Mian 上海粗炒面
Homemade Pork and Veggie Wonton Soup
Shanghai Shui Mai

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