Mandoo City
New York has been a dumpling town for a long time. Up and down the streets of Flushing (and at countless stuffed-pouch shrines like Vanessa's Dumpling House, Joe's Shanghai, Nom Wah Tea Parlor, Grand Sichuan, Prosperity Dumpling and M Shanghai Bistro & Garden), diners can feast on platters of two-bite delights while sometimes spending less than you'd pay for a morning cup of coffee.
But lately, in Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens, at spots like Talde, RedFarm, Hakkasan, Danji, the Good Fork, the Hurricane Club, the Rickshaw food truck, Biang! and (at unpredictable intervals) Mission Chinese Food, classic dumpling forms are being executed with meticulous care -- and stuffed, pinched and twisted into fresh manifestations.
In Park Slope, Dale Talde has engineered one of the most hunted-down bar snacks of 2012, a beer-friendly, street-cart collision known as the "pretzel dumpling."
One day Mr. Schoenfeld pointed to a bowl of stuffing that Xiao Yan Mei, a prep cook, was smearing into sections of dough with a paddle that looked like a tongue depressor. That bowl held tiny cubes of roasted duck and vegetables -- cut into what the French would call a brunoise, Mr. Schoenfeld said -- all of which were meant to give the dumpling texture, "rather than having meatloaf inside."
-- Ed Schoenfeld, the veteran restaurateur behind RedFarm.
Good Thing, Small Package
New York has been a dumpling town for a long time, but lately the two-bite delights are being executed with meticulous care -- and stuffed, pinched and twisted into fresh Asian manifestations.