24 W 56 Street
New York, New York 10019
Phone: 212-333-3868
Fax: 212-397-1107
http://www.joeshanghairestaurants.com/
Well here is something different; soup dumplings. Joe’s Shanghai has three locations, one in Flushing Queens, another in Chinatown and the third, which I visited in Midtown on west 56th street. I stopped in for lunch, due to a friend who went to the Flushing location the day prior. He claims, they put crack in their dumplings which keeps you yearning for them the next day. With a comment like that this is something I really need to check out.
To be honest, the idea I had in my head was a small hole in the way, but when I walked in wow. Joe’s Shanghai is actually a rather large place, with a very nice decor. Since we went around 11:45am, we beat the lunch rush, quickly sat down and ordered the pork dumplings, crap/pork dumplings and scallion pancakes. Each order of dumplings came with 6 pieces, so between the 12 dumplings and pancakes it was a filling meal for the two of us.
Now a little on these dumplings, they are not your normal dumplings, they are actually filled with soup. On your fight bite be careful they will be sizzling hot and if you just bite into the dumpling you are in for an unpleasant surprise. There is an art to eating them, pick the dumpling up with your soup spoon, poke a hole with your fork or chop sticks, suck the soup out then eat the dumpling. The part that brought it down for me, was that the crap/pork mix tasted exactly the same as the pork, so I was unable to tell which was which.
It was a good meal, not exactly a cheap lunch meal, but entertaining. The next day I was craving the dumplings, not sure if it was just fun to eat or really laced with crack!