From Hawaiian poke bowls and sushi burritos, New York’s latest culinary fad is the humble little bite-sized soup dumplings. The dumplings hit peak frenzy in 2016, when a restaurant in the East Village called Drunken Dumpling, served a monster-sized soup dumpling – which required customers to drink the soup in the dumpling through a straw, before they dug into the meat and the flour casing. Friends swapped articles on where to find the best soup dumplings. Chef-turned-food writer Cristopher St Cavish created The Shanghai Soup Dumpling Index, a scientific investigation into the quality of soup dumplings in Shanghai.
Soup dumplings or xiao long bao, originated in Nanxiang, a suburb in Shanghai. In the 1870s, they were sold from a small teahouse to visitors at the Chinese Guyi Garden. Traditionally, soup dumplings from Shanghai were eaten by first transferring the dumpling onto a wide soup spoon, making a small tear to let the soup flow out, sipping on this soup and then consuming the actual dumpling....