So the other day, I had some spare time and decided to head over to one of my favorite restaurant that specializes in a Shanghaiese type of pot sticker pork bun (生煎包）. The restaurant is located near the biggest square in Shanghai - People's Square (人民广场）and the famous pedestrian shopping street - Nanjing Road. The restaurant is called Yang's Fried Dumpling (小杨生煎）。
The first thing you have to realize about these buns is that it does not pretend to be healthy. It is pan fried and has lots of soup with pork and some pork fat, but the taste is very satisfying. The bun is slightly larger than the size of a golf ball and the bottom of the bun is fried to a perfect crispy texture but the top half has a doughy soft texture - a nice contrast. When you bite into one of these - like its soup dumpling brethren which I will profile in a later entry - you have to be careful because it encases a nice size pork ball along with copious amounts of soup from the pork itself. You would be advised to take a small careful bite, just enough to open up a hole on its soft top side so you don't blind one of your fellow diners with hot pork soup squirting out of your bun. Then you should suck out a good amount of the soup before continuing on to finish off the bun. The price of these are a minimum purchase of 4 pot sticker buns for 4RMB - 58 cents (exchange rate of 6.84) with each additional bun at 1RMB apiece.
The restaurant itself is basically a hole in the wall with a bare minimum of service and decor. The menu contains some complementary dishes such as beef soup with soy bean noodles , duck blood soup (another topic for another day), fried tofu soup, etc. But make no mistake about it, the star of the menu is the pot sticker bun. For the uninitiated, in order to get your buns, you have to pay for the meal first at the cashier then proceed to the line to get your buns located next to the front entrance of the restaurant. After getting your buns, if you have any other complementary dishes, you need to present your receipt to the servers inside the restaurant. Finding a table is another adventure, as during dining hours the place is normally packed. You can either wait for about 5 to 10 minutes, take out and eat on the street, or find an empty seat on an occupied table (there is no sanctuary here).
I am not a big fan of Shanghai style food, but if it is known for anything it is this pot sticker bun (生煎包）。
The particulars of the restaurant:
Yang's Fried Dumpling (小杨生煎）
97 Huang He Road (near People's Square) 黄浦区黄河路97号
Other locations include:
54-60 Wu Jiang Road (near West Nanjing Road) 静安区吴江路54-60号(近南京西路)
720 East Nanjing Road 黄浦区南京东路720号食品一店内
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