Xiao Long Bao in Rockville, MD: A Guide to Finding Great Soup Dumplings

Rockville, Maryland has one of the most concentrated pockets of authentic Chinese food on the East Coast. Within a few blocks of each other, you will find restaurants that specialize in Shanghainese, Cantonese, Sichuan, and northern Chinese cuisines. If you are looking for Xiao Long Bao specifically, the Shanghai soup dumplings that have become one of the most searched Chinese dishes in the country, Rockville is the right place to start. It anchors our guide to the best soup dumplings near Washington, DC.

At Shanghai Taste, we have been making Xiao Long Bao by hand since we opened. This guide covers what to look for in a great soup dumpling, what makes ours different, and everything you need to know before your first visit.

What Are Xiao Long Bao?

Xiao Long Bao (小笼包, pronounced roughly "shao long bao") are thin-skinned steamed dumplings filled with seasoned pork and a hot, rich broth. The broth is not injected. It starts as a gelatinized pork aspic mixed into the filling, then melts into soup as the dumplings steam. When you bite through the wrapper, hot, savory broth floods your spoon.

Each XLB is folded by hand with 18 pleats. That number is not arbitrary. It is the traditional standard that distributes the thin dough evenly and seals the filling cleanly. Machine-made dumplings can get close, but the seam is thicker and gummier. Hand-pleated XLB have a lightness that machine production cannot replicate.

What Makes Great XLB

What separates a great soup dumpling from a mediocre one:

The wrapper. It should be thin enough to see the filling through, strong enough to hold a spoonful of broth without tearing. Too thick, and you are eating bread. Too thin, and it tears before you can eat it. The sweet spot requires fresh dough made to order.

The soup. It should be clear, rich, and taste of pork, not salty broth. Cloudy soup means the aspic was cooked at too high a temperature. The best XLB have broth that is almost like a consommé: concentrated, clean, intensely flavored.

The filling. Coarsely ground pork with ginger, scallion, Shaoxing wine, and white pepper. These ingredients should be present but subtle. The filling should have texture, not paste consistency.

Fresh, not frozen. Frozen XLB exist. They are not the same. The wrapper gets wet during thawing and loses its delicacy. Any restaurant making soup dumplings worth eating makes them daily, or at minimum in batches throughout the day.

Xiao Long Bao at Shanghai Taste

Our XLB are handmade in our Rockville kitchen every day. We make them in small batches so they are always fresh. Each dumpling is pleated by hand to 18 folds. We use a pork aspic that we cook down ourselves, not a powder or a shortcut. The result is a broth that has real body and depth.

The Washington Post described us as "the virtuoso of soup dumplings." Food economist Tyler Cowen, who maintains one of the most influential ethnic dining guides in the country, called our XLB "probably the best of our region." We do not take those assessments lightly. They are the standard we hold ourselves to every day.

You will find our soup dumplings under Shanghai Dim Sum on our full menu. We also offer Sheng Jian Bao, pan-fried pork buns with the same juicy filling but a crispy golden bottom and a thicker, bread-like wrapper. If you can only get one thing, get both. They are different enough that ordering just one means missing the other half of the story.

How to Order and What to Expect

Shanghai Taste is a small, cozy restaurant at 1121 Nelson St in Rockville's Woodley Gardens neighborhood. We do not take reservations. We fill up, especially on weekends. If you arrive at 11 AM when we open, you will be seated immediately. If you arrive at noon on a Saturday, you may wait a few minutes.

Order the Pork Soup Dumplings (Xiao Long Bao) as your first course. One order serves one to two people as a starter. If you are eating with two people and plan a full meal, order one portion of XLB and one of Sheng Jian Bao, then add a noodle dish and a cold appetizer. That is the shape of a classic Shanghainese meal.

If you need help eating them without burning yourself, read our complete XLB eating guide. The short version: put the dumpling in your soup spoon, nibble a small hole, sip the broth, then eat it in one bite. Do not bite a whole XLB in half. You will regret it.

Getting Here

Shanghai Taste is located at 1121 Nelson St, Rockville, MD 20850, in the Woodley Gardens shopping center just off I-270. Open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 AM to 9 PM. Closed Mondays. Dine-in and takeout available. Wheelchair accessible.

If you are visiting from Washington DC, take the Red Line to White Flint or Twinbrook, then a short rideshare to the restaurant. Street parking is available in the shopping center lot.

Sources and Further Reading

• The Washington Post: Shanghai Taste — The Virtuoso of Soup Dumplings (Tim Carman, 2016)
• Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide: Shanghai Taste