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	Though many people (me, for example) love eating dumplings all year long, the New Year celebrations call for them especially: their shape resembles those boat-shaped ingots that the Chinese used for currency many, many centuries ago, and so they symbolize money, prosperity, wealth, good fortune, etc.
Photo by glutton

In NYC, many people swear by Dumpling House, or whatever other place where you can get five dumplings for a dollar, but those tend to have off-puttingly thick wrappers that turn leaden and greasy in cooking oil that’s often not hot enough for proper frying and not particularly fresh tasting. The fillings are often too fatty and uninteresting, flavorwise. There’s no finesse, no attempt to achieve the pillowy, ethereal lightness that’s the Holy Grail of dumplings. Besides, I prefer my dumplings boiled or steamed.

Dumplings almost as good my mom’s:
Super Taste
26N Eldridge St., New York, NY 10002
Known more for their hand-pulled noodles, this Fujianese hole-in-the-wall deserves recognition for its superb boiled jiaozi, which have thin, tender skins and are served with perhaps the best dumpling sauce ever.

Dumplings in another category altogether:
Chinatown Brasserie
380 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10003
NYC’s best dim sum is made by Joe Ng, who used to be at World Tong in Bensonhurst but then decamped to CB in Manhattan. His inventive, even playfully whimsical dumplings will make you think differently about the whole dumpling idiom. Also, his xiao long bao (Shanghainese soup dumplings) are as close to the best ones I’ve ever had (which were in Taiwan, actually, not at the fabled Din Tai Fung, but the even better Dian Shui Lou), and made by a Cantonese guy, no less.