 |
VANCOUVER DAZE showcases and highlights the social life and scene of our beautiful city, covering all the misadventures and shenanigans at various cultural events, mixers, parties, meetups, and local happenings. |
Volume 48: XLB Tour at Lin Chinese Cuisine and Tea House on Broadway, The Place Restaurant on Granville Street, Shanghai Wonderful Restaurant and Dinesty Chinese Restaurant in Richmond on December 17, 2011. Hashtag: #XLBtour. More photos available on Flickr.
A bunch of us decided to go on a XLB tour of Vancouver and Richmond for some sweet xiaolongbao steamed soup dumplings. We solicited recommendations and hit up four restaurants strictly for XLBs. We were stuffed eating two to three dumplings at each each place.
#1. Dinesty. The XLBs (very top) from this Richmond eatery were the smallest by far but packed a big punch. There were really good and my favourite of the bunch. They were so flavourful, most and tasty.
#2. The Place. This random and oddly generically named joint had massive XLBs full of meat and soup. There were a tad salty with thick shells, but very good nonetheless.
#3. Lin's. The first place we hit up was Lin's and the gold standard for the day. They were made fresh, but we had a first batch that was a little under par, sticky and broke the soup seal. The rest were good and quite flavourful.
#4. Shanghai Wonderful. The consensus was SW's dumplings were lackluster, not bad, but lacking flavour and texture from the rest. We tried a crab XLB and agreed it was an odd choice and inferior to pork. It was nothing special in general and a bit of a disappointment.
The order of the first three is obviously very subjective as I felt they were all top notch, tasty destinations for xiaolongbao. By the last restaurant, we were all very full from a four hour, four restaurant lunch tour. Good times.
