According to a teaser, China Live will have SJB.
Weâll find out soon enough.
Christopher St. Cavish followed up his epic Shanghai XLB endeavors with a history and classification scheme for SJB. He characterizes them is having two axes â â a crisp axis and a puffy axis. In addition to discussing the varying levels of leavening, including none at the popular Yangâs, he mentions A place in Taiwan that uses natural yeast for leavening and gives a tang.
Itâs an illuminating articleâ very few local places have the characteristic deflation he talks about in the unleavened ones. The most common local time seem to be leavened with little free-floating soup. The puffiest Iâve encountered is at the Monterey location of shanghai dumpling King, which is not an SJB but a bleached white fluffy bao that they happen to pan fry.
Itâs odd that St. Cavish overlooked a key variable, whether the baozi are fried pleated side up or pleated side down, and if there is any correlation between this variable and the degree of leavening. According Shanghaiâs most renowned foodie Shen Hong Fei, frying with the pleats up is âShanghai styleâ while frying gthem upside down is âSuzhou style.â Be that as it may, the Suzhou style seems to predominate in Shanghai these days.
Interesting. St. Cavish traces the unleavened, presumably pleat down, soup filled style to 1930s Shanghai. Iâd incorrectly assumed the soup filled ones were a current trend. Other than Shen Hong Fei quote, have you come across people talking about Suzhou style SJB, and whether thatâs just popular there or originated there?
Steamed XLB leak from their top seam, so searing the seam in oil seams like a clever way of getting a thinner style bun without potential leakage. Bigger, fluffyier buns have enough stability and absorption that their direction isnât as important (achem, I speculate despite my own failed attempt to make fluffy, bottom seared SJB 
There may not be any correlation between the degree of leavening and whether they are fried âright side upâ or âupside down.â They nearly all seem to be fried âSuzhou styleâ today.
Shenâs 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 wasnât even the hint of soup.
Consensus on the curent best SJB in SF?
Thatâs unfortunate. I havenât 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 donât have many points of reference. Is the meatball and soup supposed to be very salty? I found Shanghai Bistroâs version very much so, which kinda took attention away from other qualities its supposed to have.
Those are pretty salty, and they donât 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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