Black Truffle Soup Dumplings

The next lusty love of your life

At the top of this month I was in New York attending the opening of a new exhibition I am part of where I debuted new upholstery work with the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum. That entire sentence is wild even typing it out, but I’m going to get back to the details of that soon! Trust me. A dedicated post is coming because…a bish is in a whole Smithsonian! And I’m still sitting in the magnitude of that.

BUT! This post is talk about one thing only, and that is the single best bite of food I had in New York during my three day trip—perhaps the single best bite I’ve experienced in at least three years. And I know I just went on about the seismic shift experience dining at Le Pigeon a recent post, but come closer to your screen and let me look you in the eyeball when I tell you the first bite of a black truffle pork soup dumpling at Shanghai 21 in Chinatown will make you lust for it’s salty, aromatic, soft garlic and truffle flavor for weeks. It will make you consider why you didn’t order two orders so that you didn’t have to share with your husband, and it will

However, let me back up and share how I even came across Shanghai 21 among the sea of places to eat in Chinatown.

This occasion of being in New York to debut work to the public also happened to be my husband’s first time visiting New York, and I wanted him to experience as much of the best of it that a few days could unfold. There’s always that modicum of self-induced pressure to find the best little hidden gem of a place to eat when in the city because, and rightfully so, New York’s reputation for having anything you want any time you want it is usurped by so few cities in the U.S. (though Portland is a strong challenger IMO). Mike is incredibly chill about everything, except food, of which he gets the most excited about second to sneakers. So when he said he was especially wanting to experience Chinatown, a place I hadn’t visited myself in about 10 years, I decided Instagram as my search tool wasn’t going to help me navigate where was really worth going. I needed a more vetted source that had done actual research. A Vogue article from 2021 written by Lucie Zhang called “Take a Dumpling Crawl Through New York City’s Chinatown” proved to be the guide that lead our stomachs down Canal, hooking a left on Milton and inside the flourescent lit Shanghai 21.

The description of how Chef Raymond Yip makes his dumplings—perfectly steamed using gelatin vs. pig’s knuckle broth—was the clincher for me. Accompanied by the words “black truffle”, which are like my dog whistle that I am going to order a dish regardless of what else comes with it.

We’ve eaten tons and tons of dumplings before, but to be honest soup dumplings bring more playfulness because they release flavor in a trio of dumpling, broth and filling, one after the other. That first slurp of broth from the roof of the dumpling is salacious and, the pull of soft dough with your bare teeth is sensual, and then you taste juicy pork and garlic and truffle and maybe a bit of vinegar and you find your left hand sliding down your throat trying to supress a moan. A dumpling is irresistible, whether you like meat or strictly veggie. They are made to tease because they are literal pouches concealing wondrously delicious secrets inside.

So alas, I am sick that I do not live closer to New York, or more specifically Shanghai 21, and will petition for an outpost here in Minnesota to open. Stay tuned. And in the meantime, go eat.

x

Nicole