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. Somewhat small and squat, they pack a powerful flavor, with a gravy more viscous than average. Besides dumplings, La Salle offers noodles and Cantonese stir fries.

This second, more luxuriant branch of a Shanghai dumpling specialist in Flushing (Shanghai You Garden) offers the best soup dumplings 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.

For a decade, the lines have stretched out the door at this modest Flushing dumpling house, which was once said to have the best XLB 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 include one with squash, shrimp, and pork and another with scallops. The juicy buns are indeed thin-skinned and wonderfully wobbly, with the crab variation featuring a good quantity of crustacean inside the filling and on top.

This delightful spot with plenty of blonde wood chairs is one of a small collection of Taiwanese restaurants just north of the Long Island Expressway. The XLB here are carefully made with a particularly rich gravy, and don’t be deterred that only one of the crab versions of the dumplings has a wad on top: The rest have a generous quantity mixed inside with the pork.

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

Red Farm’s soup dumpling is more of the luxury variety, priced at $16 for four. Each one gets an individual steamer basket, filled with a pork and crab mixture; a truffle version is occasionally on offer. The skin here is particularly thin, with plentiful amounts of separated broth and meat. Supplement with the pastrami-filled egg roll and barbecue roast duck rice noodles, at either the West Village or Upper West Side locations.

3 Times has gone through a couple of iterations since it opened late last year, but no matter what pops up on the new menu, head first to the classic pork soup dumplings for a consistent taste of tried-and-true Shanghai xiao long bao. Owner Jason Zhu recently brought on longtime chef Yuqin Xu to revamp the dim sum program, and besides the classics, the restaurant sells six-piece truffle soup dumplings and another pork version with crab roe.

The Bao’s very popular soup dumplings are back after a brief absence for quality control. Beyond the “near-perfect” classic pork-filled pouches, there are also ones filled with a melty chocolate and banana mixture. The East Village Chinese restaurant is a spin-off of Flushing’s Kung Fu Xiao Long Bao, serving an across-the-board Chinese menu of dim sum, Sichuan dishes like cumin lamb, Cantonese classics such as beef and broccoli, and others from Hunan and beyond.

In newer Chinese food destination Forest Hills, an alum of soup dumpling stalwarts like Joe’s and Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao opened his own restaurant on Austin Street in 2018, bringing his soup dumpling prowess with him. Owner-chef Xueling Zhang is known for stand-out versions of both a classic pork and a pork with crab meat. It’s counter-service and doesn’t have a ton of seating, but it’s already a local hit.

For years, two large and distinguished Shanghai restaurants stood almost side-by-side on Mott just north of Canal, Shanghai Café Deluxe and Shanghai Heping, providing fierce competition where soup dumplings were concerned. Now the first of those is closed, leaving Shanghai Heping (named after a public park in Shanghai) to prevail. Its dumplings are very good, with a particularly rich dipping sauce that doesn’t stint on the black vinegar and fresh ginger.

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.

This anchoring stall in the Fei Long Market’s food court, wonderfully close to the Eighth Avenue N stop in Sunset Park’s Chinatown, has what might be the best soup dumplings in town. These are the no-frills article, available in six variations, some surprising, including one filled with pork and crab roe, and another featuring vegetables and mushrooms. Six to an order, the dumplings are bigger than usual and exceedingly thin-skinned, packing an improbable quantity of soup. Cash only.