You can try the pan-fried baos, poke at the crispy green onion pancakes and sample the hand-pulled noodles, but please, read the room—and the awning that wraps around the building. This casual eatery excels in the delicate art of soup dumplings, which arrive with supple skins and spoonfuls of delicious broth far clearer and more distilled than most. From open till close, chefs in the back wrap and fold everything by hand, and unlike most kitchens that are content to offer just a typical pork variety, fillings here include chicken, beef, and our favorite, a Sichuan-inspired numbing pork.
A prime corner location in the Theater District lures in the crowds, who clearly work up an appetite by walking by table after table of bamboo steamers stacked to the sky.