This modern canteen near Columbia University specializes in soup dumplings in three variations, including one featuring kimchi. The crab-bearing XLB are the best, boasting crab mixed in with the usual pork filling and not just on top. Somewhat small and squat, they pack powerful flavor, with a gravy more viscous than average. Besides dumplings, La Salle offers noodles and Cantonese stir fries.

Red Farm’s soup dumpling is more of the luxury variety, priced at $22 for four. Bigger than usual, each is served in a separate steamer, filled with a pork and crab mixture; a truffle version is occasionally on offer. The skin here is particularly thin, with plentiful amounts of broth and meat. Supplement with the pastrami-filled egg roll and barbecue roast duck rice noodles at the Upper West Side location (the West Village location is closed).

This second, more luxuriant branch of a Shanghai dumpling specialist in Flushing (Shanghai You Garden) offers some of the best XLB in the city, with some particularly crabby pork-and-crab examples, in addition to other venerable Shanghai types of buns and dumplings. It has also jumped on the mega-XLB bandwagon, offering an outsize example (shown), one to a steamer, with a plastic straw to suck a huge quantity of soup out. The dumpling skin is super thick, resembling more of a bread bowl than a dumpling.

DD is a dumpling shop turned into a full service restaurant, offering a broad range of chicken, shrimp, and vegetarian dumplings, in addition to Japanese teriyaki specialties including a dozen types of skewers. Yet the heart of the menu remains xiao long bao, in the expected pork and pork and crab formulations, but also with an unusual loofah stuffing — you know, the hippie back-scrubbing squash, but in its supple green form.

For a decade, the lines have stretched out the door at this modest Flushing dumpling house, which was once said to have the best soup dumplings in town. But in fall 2019, Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao moved to this much flashier locale inside One Fulton Square, with room for more diners and a new, expanded menu. In addition to the classic pork and crab-and-pork, options includes squash, shrimp and pork, and scallops. The “juicy buns,” as they call them, are thin-skinned and wonderfully wobbly, with the crab variation featuring a good quantity of crustacean inside the filling and on top.

The food at this Chinese chain originates in the provincial capital of Hangzhou, 100 miles southwest of Shanghai. The soup dumplings are very elegantly presented, and show a few differences from the ones you might be familiar with: smaller, taller, and presented with a pale vinegar laced with shredded ginger.

This deep and narrow place, with ducks and cured pork hanging in the window, has brought decent dim sum to the Flatiron, probably for the first time. The soup dumplings are presented rather unceremoniously in a plastic carryout container, three to an order, but are quite good nonetheless. Look for other branches around town, along with locations of the mothership Dim Sum Palace in Chinatown and Wall Street.

Flatiron’s Baodega offers lunch specials that attract office workers in the neighborhood, and a coffee bar as a further convenience. The restaurant sells four types of soup dumplings, on a menu that partly specializes in Shanghai cooking: pork or pork with crab (either steamed or pan fried), chicken, and vegetarian. Pick the pork with crab, which is thin-skinned and bulging with a medium-weight broth.

Steam is the latest of several Chinese restaurants to appear in the Village along 6th Avenue. This semi-fast food spot, which boasts a robot out front that doesn’t see much use, provides a colorful series of dumplings, as well as Shanghai and Sichuan appetizers. The soup dumplings are bigger than usual and bulge at the bottom with soup. Unusual flavors include chicken with white truffle and chicken with ginseng.

3 Times has gone through a several menu iterations since it opened, but no matter what pops up, head first to the classic pork soup dumplings for a consistent taste of tried-and-true Shanghai xiao long bao. Besides the classics, the restaurant sells chicken soup dumplings.

Beyond the Bao’s “near-perfect” classic pork-filled pouches, there are also ones filled with spicy pork, shrimp, chicken, and a dubious chocolate and banana mixture. The East Village Chinese restaurant is a spin-off of Flushing’s Kung Fu Xiao Long Bao, serving a further menu of dim sum, Sichuan dishes, Cantonese classics such as beef and broccoli, and other dishes from Hunan and beyond.

Soho’s Pinch Chinese came out swinging with an impressive roster of rich, flavorful soup dumplings when it opened a few years ago and aced a Times review just months into its existence, in part due to its soul-satisfying chicken soup dumplings. The pork dumplings — described as “bite sized explosions of porky goodness” on the menu — and the chicken XLB with the house spicy sauce are also worth trying.

This Chinatown newcomer right over the Grand Street station on the F is decorated like a forest, and it devotes the first part of its menu exclusively to soup dumplings. There are six varieties that come five to a steamer in the following permutations: pork, pork with crab, spicy pork, chicken, truffle pork, and garlic pork. The dumplings are thick skinned compared to many, but they come is a rainbow of colors.

456 Shanghai Cuisine is probably the best soup dumpling bargain in town. Founded in 1963, it claims to be our oldest Shanghai restaurant. The dumplings are bulbous and perfectly formed, with a skin a bit thicker than usual, and a gravy slightly on the sweet side. At eight for $5.50, they’re the cheapest at this level of homemade quality.

Though in a different location back then, this is where it all started 25 years ago — the popularization of soup dumplings in New York City. There are other branches in Flushing and MIdtown, but the long xiao bao here are still the best, tossed helter skelter into the steamer.

Nan Xiang Express is a fast-food offshoot of the original Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao, and though it doesn’t offer the dumplings in a rainbow of colors, it does provide pork, pork and crab, chicken, and the rather odd beef version of the famous dumplings.

This anime-themed casual restaurant has some of the best XLB in Bensonhurst. Five to a steamer, they are bigger than usual, thin skinned, and good in both their pork and pork-and-crab evocations. Other snacks and noodles are worth exploring. The restaurant is lined with shelf upon shelf of anime figures.