How are xiaolongbao meant to be eaten, and is any particular place worth queuing for?

Xiaolongbao are the easiest Shanghai snack to eat wrongly: a thin skin, soup inside, and a temperature at the table high enough that the wrong first move burns.

How to eat one: spoon, nick, sip, bite

Grip the dumpling with chopsticks at the twisted top, not around the belly, which is where the soup sits. Lower it into a spoon, bite a nail-sized opening in the side of the skin to let the steam out, wait a few seconds, sip the soup, then eat the rest in one mouthful. The order is not pedantry. The soup is sealed inside the skin during steaming and stays far hotter than the wrapper, so the first thing your teeth meet is the scalding part. Dip in ginger and vinegar, but do not drown the whole dumpling: soak it and the skin collapses and the broth stops reading. Eat them while they are hot, because a cool one has a tough skin and congealed soup.

Telling a good one from a mediocre one

Look at the skin. A good wrapper is thin enough to show a hint of the filling through it, elastic when lifted, and it neither tears nor sticks to the bottom of the spoon. Too thick and you are eating dough; too thin, or left too long in the steamer, and it sticks and falls apart. Fine, evenly spaced pleats and a neat twist are basic craft. Look at the filling. The pork should have spring and the fragrance of ginger and rice wine rather than a slack paste, and the broth should have body from gelatin, not a layer of oil over clear water. One signal is visible on the spot: a good shop steams in small batches, with steam rising continuously, while a stack of pre-steamed, reheating baskets on the counter means you can walk on.

Shanghai style, Nanxiang style and other versions

The city version is small and fine: thin skin, delicately minced filling, clear soup, usually six or eight to a steamer, served with ginger and vinegar. The Nanxiang line comes from Nanxiang town in Jiading, and is bigger, with a slightly thicker skin and a coarser chop, so the pork and the wheat both register more strongly. Neither is better; it depends whether you want fine or substantial. Elsewhere in the Jiangnan region there are further versions, some with a skin closer to a small bun, some sweeter or more savoury. The name is the same; the method is not.

Ordering, drinks and the queue question

You can order without Chinese: point at a picture on the menu or at the steamer by the door, photograph the menu with a translation app, or say “yi long xiaolong”. Most shops sell by the steamer, so confirm before ordering. For a small table, a bowl of small wonton or noodle soup alongside is closer to how locals eat. Hot green tea, jasmine tea or plain warm water is the safe drink and does not sit on top of the soup.

On the queue: a long line reflects fame, location and social media rather than the level of the cooking. Plenty of shops turn out competent xiaolongbao, in neighbourhoods and in shopping centres, and there is no need to stake a meal on the longest line in the city. The useful variable is timing: weekday mornings and early afternoons usually mean no wait, while weekend and holiday lunches are the worst.

Xiaolongbao are one branch of the local pastry repertoire, and eating them on the same day as a proper benbang meal makes the city’s cooking easier to read. How to order Shanghai local food covers that side, and the food and etiquette guide covers ordering phrases and serving chopsticks. Lao Zhengxing is an old benbang restaurant and xiaolongbao are incidental there rather than the speciality; if you are going out of your way to a particular name, confirm the signboard and the branch first.