I’ve been complaining about the lack of Shanghai-style dumplings in the states for over a year. One of the food-related downsides to travel is the two-fold discovery. First you eat something transcendent in, say, China, only to return and realize it is impossible to get anthing remotely similar at home.
During a week in Shanghai in the spring of 2008, my goal was to eat absolutely everything put in front of me, and I came remarkably close. I even managed to gulp down a few bites of blood soup before calling ‘uncle’ in universal sign language (clutching my throat, rolling off the chair, and writhing on the floor while making gagging noises).
But without a doubt the biggest culinary revelation of the trip were the incredible dumplings. We even ate them for breakfast and in less than a week I went from thinking that pork dumplings at 8 am were about the strangest start to the day to craving them from the moment I woke up.
This presented an immediate problem once I passed through customs back into the U.S. It was morning in Portland and there wasn’t a dumpling anywhere in the airport. Spokane wasn’t any better: no dumplings. And not just for breakfast. I couldn’t find anything even marginally similar anywhere in town at any hour.
I asked my Chinese friends: still no joy. They said part of the reason they return to China almost yearly is simply to eat dumplings.
Then Wednesday night I discovered a reference on a San Francisco web site describing a tiny shop in Millbrae that served Xiao Long Bao. The place is called the Shanghai Dumpling Shop. It was a long shot, but I was desperate.
Last night after a meeting in San Francisco with Kate Riley of Mercedes ‘Hair of the Dog’ Cantina I punched into the GPS the coordinates for the dumpling shop (455 Broadway, Millbrae CA) and headed down the 101.
I counted it as a hopeful sign that nearly everyone in the shop was Chinese and the man behind the counter looked suspiciously at me. It is the Seinfeld ‘Soup Nazi’ Principle: some of the best food is to be found in places that don’t need your business and might not be particularly pleased you walked in the door.
The fact that I heard more Mandarin at the tables around me than English was another hopeful sign, and so I didn’t waste my time exegeting the whole menu. I just asked for the pork Xiao Long Bao ($7.50 for 10) and ten minutes later a bamboo steamer arrived without ceremony at my table.
They were not exactly like I remembered from the storefront shops in Shanghai, but they were very, very close. In fact they were so close I was very, very happy even though I nearly burned my tongue as the hot juices of the first one squirted out into my mouth when I bit down.
Millbrae isn’t close enought to Spokane for a daily fix, but plane tickets to California are somewhat cheaper than those to Shanghai and, at least as of yesterday, a passport wasn’t required to order at the Shanghai Dumpling Shop.
