Xiao-long-bao, often abbreviated as XLB, is a type of dumpling that still have soup inside as you eat it. As it was invented near Shanghai in the village of Nanxiang, it was often called "Shanghai Dumplings". Visually, it looks like a round white dumpling, slightly larger than a siu-mai (pork dumpling), and roughly the size of har-gow (shrimp dumpling). Xiao-long-bao, with one in a Chinese spoon for scale One thing to note about XLB is they are hot, and if you are not careful enough extracting the dumpling from the steamer basket, you can break the skin, and lose all the soup inside the dumpling. While it is only a tiny bit, that is the whole point of eating the XLB. Because the soup inside is hot, you don't plop it into your mouth either. Put one into the Chinese spoon, then carefully bite a small hole (or use the chopstick) and taste the rich broth inside the dumpling. THEN take a slightly larger bite. This is not a chicken nugget. The XLB can be found all over Chinat...
An exploration of San Francisco Chinatown typically NOT covered by tours