Xiao Long Bao Thread

Discussion in 'Food and Drink' started by purr1n, Dec 6, 2016.

  1. shipsupt

    shipsupt Admin

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    There are some surpsingly good options at the hotels, the good ones compete for having good food. I usually stay at the Palace Downtown when I'm there and all the options for good from Ewaan to Fai and even Asado if you want to get your beef on. Certainly I find Dubai more about international dishes than local content.

    Unfortunately, some of the really good small local establishments we found during Desert Shield and Storm are long since swallowed up by the urban sprawl that is Dubai.
     
  2. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Sadly I didn't have enough time. Their weekend starts Thursday night, and places only opened on Friday at noon when I had a flight to catch.

    I loved the portraits of Sheikh Mohammed. He looks like a serious badass.
     
  3. HitmanFluffy

    HitmanFluffy Hoping to see real genitals someday!

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    Dim sum chains tend to vary significantly in my experience. Even Crystal Jade in friggin' Singapore has wild variations in quality with the XLB. (Don't go to the one at Holland Village, etc.)
     
  4. Drifterxny

    Drifterxny Friend

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    got to try some chicken xlb at one of the DTF in Jakarta earlier this year, the meat kinda just broke apart, but was really light and clean tasting, and surprisingly there was an ok amount of soup, was pretty interesting. The pork ones were horrible, I guess the pork's really not that fresh being that it's a muslim country.

    Can anyone recommend the best xlb place in Singapore?
    Will be visiting in Feb, feel free to pm me anything else that I shouldn't miss, thanks guys.
     
  5. HitmanFluffy

    HitmanFluffy Hoping to see real genitals someday!

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    I mean XLB in Singapore is decent (still lightyears ahead of Western countries) but isn't necessarily a highlight of the food there.
     
  6. Kunlun

    Kunlun cat-alyzes cat-aclysmic cat-erwauling - Friend

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    Speaking of Chinese Muslim food, what do people think of Xi'an Famous Food in NYC?It's from western China. The dad who owns it literally has a special locked room in their kitchen for the secret spice formula to get made. So, they're serious. The son chooses the hip-hop tunes they play.

    I've taken a few girls and always deadpan suggested the concubine chicken, because it's hilarious and also tasty. The sour spicy soup is nice (1 on Asian spicy scale. But flavorful). I also get the can of Chinese herbal medicine soda just to represent. It's not terrible, except that it is kinda terrible.
     
  7. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Here's the DTF in Dubai. It's a mall location. Don't discount it because it's a mall location. The DTF mall location in Arcadia, CA (where all the Chinese live) was fantastic the last time I was there. Maybe head boss from Taiwan came to crack some skulls while the old DTF location on Baldwin Ave. was being remodeled. The mall location in Sydney Australia was actually quite good too. Probably because of its vicinity to Taiwan and the Chinese population in Australia.

    20161215_210030.jpg

    I thought I might have had a chance to have pork dumpings because the hotel I stayed at had pork items on the menu. But this was not to be. The chicken XLB was depressingly bad at this location. The core just kind of fell apart into bits of chicken, there was no pressurized juice with coagulated blood (this won't happen with chicken meat anyway). The wrapper was too rubbery. A good wrapper should be somewhere between rubbery and soft / doughy (in Hokkien, there are words to describe this: que and nwua). Too rubbery, and the wrapper is tough like squid. Too squishy, and it falls part too easily. As we can see below, the XLB sucks. BTW, black vinegar was not provided. Instead, I got rice wine vinegar and soy sauce. This is totally unacceptable!

    20161215_214257.jpg

    Now the beef dumplings were not bad at all. The juices exploded out of these with coagulated blood and stuff. The downside to the beef dumplings was again, too rubbery of a wrapper, and also, slightly under-steamed top of the wrapper. This is unacceptable and shows lack of attention and care.

    The chicken XLB dumpings are certainly a fail, considering that Trader Joe's can get its frozen chicken potsticker's to taste semi-decent. It's obvious that DTF did not give a crap enough to formulate a tasty juicy core made out of chicken or perhaps a chicken / beef mix. And oh yeah, this mall had a ski-slope inside of it. Nuts. But everything about Dubai is weird.
    20161215_204439.jpg
     
  8. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    OMFG, that is totally you. People don't get you sometimes in your arguments with the Sparrow. Having met you, I totally get it.
     
  9. Drifterxny

    Drifterxny Friend

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    yeah I'm sure, but my buddy that i'm travelling with loves xlb so gotta find a place to go with him. Otherwise, it's just gonna be nearest DTF.
     
  10. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Haha. I can eat XLB or dumplings two of every five meals and never get sick of it. I have a slight preference toward the oldschool Shanghai style with the thicker wrappers and hearty cores as opposed to the Taiwanese "STAX" light and delicate style. But I appreciate both.
     
  11. HitmanFluffy

    HitmanFluffy Hoping to see real genitals someday!

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    Crystal Jade XLB is waaaay better than DTF. Both are overpriced to heck though.
     
  12. Grahad

    Grahad Guest

    There is so much good food in Singapore that you should establish some preferences first (spicy/etc).

    I don't particularly remember where has the best XLB though, cause it tends to be fairly overpriced most of the time from a SGD perspective.
     
  13. sphinxvc

    sphinxvc Gear Master (retired)

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    Went back to The Bao today and tried the Super Spicy Xiao Long Bao, super good. 12/1 on the white man spicy scale.
     
  14. shipsupt

    shipsupt Admin

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    There was a place in the basement of the retail store building next to the Hilton on Orchard Road that was outstanding, but I can't remember the name for the life of me. Just a small little place that one of my friends who lives there took me to. It was really good.

    Singapore has amazing food options! Enjoy.
     
  15. gixxerwimp

    gixxerwimp Professional tricycle rider

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    Sorry to hear that. I did warn you that it might not be up to snuff. I don't think beef dumplings are on the menu in Taiwan so those might have been made locally.

    Are the chefs in a glass cage where you can see them making everything from scratch? At least then you'll know that they weren't flown in frozen from Taiwan as my wife suspects of the DTF in China.
     
  16. eastboundofnowhere

    eastboundofnowhere Facebook Friend

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    I might fall into the while man scale category but I love cajun food and anything with chile's or peppers. If any of you know of a good place in the Dallas area let me know. This thread does look good.
     
  17. shipsupt

    shipsupt Admin

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    I don't know Dallas and I'm not a fan of chains, but if you have trouble finding a good Cajun spot (which shouldn't be a problem in Dallas) you can usually get a decent meal at Pappadeaux.
     
  18. eastboundofnowhere

    eastboundofnowhere Facebook Friend

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    Oh, yeah Pappadeazux is pretty damn good for what it is. For cajun food I do head down to LA(the other one, have never been to the one most of you are probably more familiar with)every couple of years regardless and have figured out how to cook reasonable facsimiles of several dishes. I meant looking for specifically Xiao Long Bao. Honestly, at the risk of sounding ignorant, I don't even know what it is, but in this case I really am ignorant because I don't know. Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, really don't take offense if that is inaccurate or a generalization, but the dishes here look really good and I would like to try it out somewhere I could reasonably get to.
     
  19. eastboundofnowhere

    eastboundofnowhere Facebook Friend

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    I've only had one asian dish I really, really loved and that was outside of an Army Post in the middle nowhere from a family owned establishment where even the wait staff didn't speak english(I just pointed). It was delicious, but it burned my mouth with the fire of a thousand suns. I remember specifically it was called Pad Thai. I have ordered it everywhere and it was never even remotely close.
     
  20. Kunlun

    Kunlun cat-alyzes cat-aclysmic cat-erwauling - Friend

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    Try these places and report back!
    https://cravedfw.com/2013/08/22/battle-of-the-dallas-soup-dumpling/

    P.S. when you get soup dumplings, put a dumpling in the soup spoon provided. Then, poke (or nibble) a hole in the dumpling. Drain the delicious soup, which is caught in the soup spoon. Consume this liquid, taking care not to burn your tongue. Then, you may add a little soy sauce (usually it has scallions and ginger in it, too) into the dumpling using the same hole used to drain the soup. Now, consume the dumpling. Repeat this process until all the soup dumplings have been consumed.
     

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