above: The vast menu offers appetizers, fried rice, stir fries, noodles and soup, as well as the main attraction: the best soup dumplings in Fairfield County.
Photography: contributed by brand
The much-anticipated hotspot for “the best soup dumplings in NYC” has launched in Fairfield County. Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao, the fabled soup dumpling destination in Flushing, Queens, has opened a Stamford restaurant, and foodies are filling the cavernous 186-seat restaurant. Nan Xiang’s reputation for authentic soup dumplings started in 2003, when it became a destination for homemade, hand-rolled dumplings filled with rich broth and flavorful meatballs. For seven years, it garnered a Michelin recommendation.
In Stamford, the focal point of the dining room is the enormous window looking into the kitchen. A line of cooks in aprons and caps face the dining room, before a flour-dusted work bench. One cook cut knobs from a coil of dough. Another deftly rolled each piece into thin, round dumpling skins. Another cook dipped into a bowl heaped with glistening filling, placed a spoonful into the center of skin and folded the edges together, turning and pinching to create the distinctive twisted top.
Nan Xiang is big, high-ceilinged, loud and busy. It’s not about the atmosphere. It’s about the eating. The menu is vast—stir-fries, noodles, soups, cold dishes, all-day breakfast and desserts—but the soup dumplings are the stars. There are ten kinds, and the best place to start is with the classic Nan Xiang pork soup dumpling and the crab and pork soup dumpling. We also tried the abalone and pork offering, one of their “gourmet” line of dumplings. They come six to an order. (The dumplings reheat well at home, in a steamer lined with parchment paper.)
When you lift the bamboo lid, steam rises from the dumplings, which with their domed shapes and twisted tops, evoke a group of mini mountains. The most perilous moment of the experience is using the metal tongs or chopsticks to lift a dumpling from the parchment paper and place it on your spoon. Lift from the peak, being careful not to tear the skin. Sometimes, the dumplings stick to the parchment, and you might need to use another chopstick to separate it from the paper. If you pierce it, or it tears, and the broth starts to run out, just keep moving and get that dumpling on your spoon.
A visual instruction card on the table shows how to eat the dumplings. First, nibble a small hole in the side of the dumpling to let out the steam, then bite a bigger hole to drink in the rich broth. Fresh minced ginger and black vinegar are served with the dumplings, and you can top it with shredded ginger, add a drop of black vinegar, and slurp and savor your way to soup dumpling heaven.
These soup dumplings deserve all of their accolades. They’re big, juicy, soft, rich and bursting with flavor. The dumpling skins are thin and silk, and the meatballs are deftly seasoned. Crab and pork soup dumplings were blissful. Abalone and pork had a gentle essence of the sea. For a sample, the Lucky Six is the colorful choice, the steamer revealing orange (scallop and pork), green (gourd luffa, shrimp and pork), yellow (chicken), black (pork and truffle), white (pork) and white crowned with golden crab roe (pork and shrimp) soup dumplings.
Crab and pork are the filling used for the pan-fried buns, a chef-recommended dish that servers carried to many tables the night we visited. The buns look adorable, round, plump and are flecked with black sesame seeds. The edges hint at their crisp bottoms, and golden crab roe crowns the top with sliced rounds of green scallions. Steamed vegetable dumplings (sans soup) are crafted to evoke leaves.
My dining companion, who goes into Flushing regularly for dim sum, was thrilled to see the range of the menu, with cold dishes (appetizers) like pressed tofu with Chinese celery, jellyfish with turnip salad and shredded pig ear. Go ahead and try the pig’s ear. It’s a dish very much about texture, combining a pleasing crunch and gelatinousness against a spicy numbing sauce with a hint of star anise. Cucumbers with garlic are a crowd-pleaser, if your crowd likes to get their appetite going with crunchy cukes and a lot of garlic.
A noodle dish completes the meal. Pan-fried crispy noodles relax and soften beneath the hot, glossy sauce filled with straw mushrooms, wood fungus, pressed tofu, scallions, carrots and bok choy. It’s a satisfying dish of umami flavors with soft and crunchy textures. There are also a lot of noodle soups to explore. Nan Xian is a place to come back to again and again. The restaurant’s arrival in Stamford is part of a big expansion for the brand, a move that some may worry could compromise the original qualities that made its name. But Nan Xiang’s soup dumplings are the absolute best in Fairfield County. No need to trek out to Flushing anymore.