I do love me some XLB, and DSG makes a fabulous variety of them… but this seems silly and, judging from Laban’s verdict, could use some work still.
I’ll stick to the regular XLB. Not everything has to be XL. No XLXLB for me 
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So this is a thing in several dumpling shops! I have never tried it, and to your point, it seems like a waste of a good soup dumpling opportunity. A friend who’s tried this in China (maybe Shanghai?) said that while it’s good and the soup is tasty, it’s hard to of course eat the filling and the wrapper, since it falls apart on you. This seems to be a showy way to enjoy the savory soup inside.
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The broth is the main attraction, tho, no?
The “golfball-sized nugget of meat bobbing inside was so hard from the long cooking time that it seemed beside the point” certainly does not sound appealing.
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Found a recipe online if anyone is brave enough to try making this at home:
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I had one of these at a place in LA a number of years ago.
It was quite tasty, but it was really more an Instagram thing than an actual food you’d want because you’re hungry for soup dumplings.
The boba straw was a cute touch, but once you sucked it dry, yea, the wrapper more or less shreds, and your left scooping up little sheets of dumpling wrapper and a broken meatball. Tasty enough, but strictly a novelty experience.
If the broth is the star, then it’s kind of a letdown if everything else falls apart before you can actually enjoy it together. The whole point of XLB for me is getting that perfect bite of soup, wrapper, and meat all at once. Sounds like the XL version kind of misses the mark on that balance.
