Review: At OG Dumpling House, stellar noodle bowls and dumplings

But xiao long bao, soup dumplings, did not meet my finicky standards

Dan dan noodles with pork at OG Dumpling House.

Before encountering my first xiao long bao, I was already an eager student of the Chinese dumpling arts. A glimpse of its brilliant galaxy of bite-sized wonders led to researching my own star charts during mornings at Manhattan Chinatown dim sum parlors that drifted into afternoons.

Then a supernova, in a restaurant called Joe’s Shanghai.

A lifted lid released a puff of steam, revealing the plumpest dumplings yet. Not just juicy but jiggling, barely constrained by translucent pasta.

An acolyte demonstrated the ritual. Reverently lift the dumpling by its swirled topknot with chopsticks and place it in a ceramic soup spoon. Nibble the topknot off – carefully, because the insides are magma hot. Allow to cool for a few moments. Sip a little broth. Accent with slivered fresh ginger in black vinegar, if desired. Consume.

Handle xiao long bao roughly, and its prized double-strength broth drains instantly, deflated to a meatball-in-pasta consolation prize. Eat xiao long bao too eagerly, and its scalding will teach you patience.

Danger plus deliciousness make xiao long bao hard to forget. Their delicate nature makes it even harder to find outside major metropolises. A local Chinese restaurateur explained the problem: Xiao long bao masters draw such high salaries that you’d have to build a whole restaurant around them.

Those drawn to its amalgam of fear and flavor will track down any promising leads, which made a visit to OG Dumpling House obligatory. The Rochester-founded operation opened a second location recently on Niagara Falls Boulevard.

Start out small, with Szechuan wontons ($8), slips of dough around dabs of pork, sluiced with tingly chile oil. Sesame balls (5/$6) are deep-fried golfball-sized sesame-speckled doughnuts filled with sweet sesame paste. While often relegated to dessert status, they tend to disappear any time a plateful lands.

The vegetarian bao (3/$8) hid kicky chopped mustard greens and mushrooms, a pleasant surprise inside the puffy white flavor-neutral dough. Three per order would make this a standby on my snack attack list, if I was a plants-only eater.

Fried house dumplings, OG Dumpling House.

Pork and cabbage dumplings, steamed or fried ($9), and house dumplings of pork, shrimp, and chives ($9.50) were sturdy and well-filled.

When the bowls started dropping, the pace picked up. Dan dan noodle ($13), served with pork or tofu, caught my eye with crimson chile-slicked broth. Wheat noodles the caliber of chubby spaghetti hid under verdant bok choy and a drift of wokked ground pork. The broth’s gentle chile buzz made it take-home-the-leftovers territory.

Lanzhou spicy beef noodle ($16), with sliced braised beef, daikon radish, and chile oil, also grew a crowd. Handfuls of chopped scallion and cilantro confetti added life to the party.

Other pasta possibilities include:

Zhajiang mian ($13) thick wheat noodles in salty soybean sauce, ground pork, cucumber, and bean sprouts, a stir-your-own pasta salad dish akin to Vietnamese bun.

OG peanut noodle with chicken, tofu ($13) or shrimp ($15), with a savory gravy with ginger-garlic undertones and peanut butter friendliness.

Pork and crab xiao long bao, OG Dumpling House.

Then there were the soup dumplings, offered in pork (5/$9), pork and crab, or shrimp ($9.50).

Many restaurant customers of my acquaintance are not aware how much of the average American restaurant’s menu is essentially heat-and-serve products. That includes many dumpling and dim sum purveyors in Western New York. Presented properly, they’re adequate-to-good more often than not.

That wasn’t my issue. Serving frozen dumplings is not a culinary crime. But careless handling can result in unpleasant shortcomings.

An order of pork and crab soup dumplings was undercooked, with partly raw pork filling discovered by guests. Alerted to the issue, a manager apologized, ordered replacements, and took the dish off the bill. These replacements were cooked properly, but a dough fissure left a dumpling devoid of broth.

A lamentable scallion pancake ($5), chewy, oily and scallion-deprived, made me stop to count the years since Chang’s Garden, my Maple Road temple of ideal scallion pancakes and more, was closed by fire. (It’s been 17 years.)

It may seem unfair to compare the work of Chinatown artistes to what’s currently served in a former Pizza Hut in Tonawanda.

My duty as a critic, as I see it, is to articulate my standards, then tell you how the goods measured up. My tastes are not superior to others, just ones I can defend.

I have no beef with people who enjoy differently. If you’ve enjoyed OG’s soup dumplings, I’m happy you got satisfaction for your money.

In the end, my soup dumpling hunt continues, but along the way, I’ve found a bowl of spicy beef noodle soup that’s quite the head-turner.

We go to dinner at the restaurants we have, not the restaurants we wish for.