Restaurant Review: Yao Fuzi

by Donna Chen of Donna Cooks

PLANO — I went to Yao Fuzi in Plano with the sole intention of comparing their xiaolongbao (better known as soup dumplings to the populace of NYC and San Fran Chinatowns) to those at Shanghai Restaurant and Jeng Chi. To my current knowledge, these are the only three restaurants in the DFW area that serve these delightful little Shanghai dumplings.

Xiaolongbao, though extremely popular in NYC thanks to Joe’s Shanghai, are still a rarity in Texas. It’s a tragedy because those who have sampled good xiaolongbao (often while living in or traveling to Shanghai or Taiwan) will find them addictive. The bite-sized dumplings have a thin, steamed, unleavened outer skin that hold in the meat filling (most often ground pork, sometimes pork with crab) and the savory broth. The proper way to consume xiaolongbao involves picking one out of the steamer with chopsticks, careful not to break the skin so the broth doesn’t leak (once the broth has leaked, a xiaolongbao is just like any other dumpling, an ordinary dry dumpling, and that’s just no fun), placing the dumpling on a Chinese soup spoon, adorning the dumpling with a few drops of the ginger vinegar sauce, and carefully taking a small bite (not big enough to actually get to the meat filling) into one side of the dumpling to allow the hot broth to run into your mouth. This is the origin of the addiction, the delight of hot savory soup squirting out of the dumpling with just a hint of sour from the ginger vinegar. The rest is simply a bite of steamed ground meat dumpling. But the extremely brief sensation of the hot soup is enough to cause a cult-like following of this little dumpling. Just Google "xiaolongbao" and witness the passionate confessions of love and obsession.

Having a Shanghai-native dad is definitely why I’m obsessed with xiaolongbao. It was, in my childhood, my favorite food. It was one of the only dishes my dad could not replicate at home. He could whip up plate after plate of down-home regional dishes or haute Chinese cuisine, but could never compare to the Shanghai street vendors when it came to xiaolongbao making skills. The infrequency of consumption only furthered the addiction. A trip to Shanghai only translates to one thing in my culinary world: xiaolongbao for breakfast every day.

Ok, enough with the borderline psychotic professing of love, and back to Yao FuZi. Having no prior knowledge of the restaurant and a simple desire to sample the soup dumplings, I met up with my better half for lunch at this west Plano spot on a weekday.

I was surprised when I walked into this elegant restaurant whose exterior is generic and plain, especially given its strip mall location. Inside, old time wooden Chinese tables and chairs are arranged in a deep red dining room with glass screens to enhance the privacy for each table. I spotted two other tables during this weekday lunch, who were all ordering from the lunch specials. Attractive presentations of the typical Chinese lunch combos scattered across the tables.

Yao Fuzi offers three menus: a lunch menu, a dinner menu in English, and a dinner menu in Chinese. The lunch menu, predictably, lists your usual rice plate combination deals with soup and eggroll. Nothing special there. I asked the waiter to recommend a couple of dishes off of the Chinese dinner menu, and he pointed me to a few items on the English dinner menu. Not all, but most of the items on the Chinese dinner menu were indeed on the English dinner menu. I perused and became confused. I saw dishes like ma po tofu (Sichuanese) and chow fun (Cantonese) along with an array of Shanghai specialties. "Where is the chef from?" I inquired. The answer, as I had suspected from the considerable list of seafood dishes, was Shanghai. So naturally, we had Shanghainese dishes for lunch.

As you can see from the sallow look of the steamed dough, these were not the juiciest soup dumplings. At $6 for the steamer, these were higher priced than the ones at Shanghai Restaurant and Jeng Chi, so I was disappointed to see that the merely average xiaolongbao at Shanghai Restaurant still rank supreme in Dallas. One positive aspect of these xiaolongbao was that the broth had excellent flavor, not too oily/rich and not too bland (the ones at Jeng Chi suffer from bland broth syndrome). But, as my partner complained and I agreed to, a plump juicy xiaolongbao is what makes it so much more fun to eat than a regular dumpling.

We split an entree of Braised Pork ($17) and steamed rice. Naming this dish "Braised Pork" is misleading. The common Mandarin name for this dish in Shanghai is "hong shao rou", or literally, red cooked meat. In most cases, the meat refers to pork belly, as was the case here. Red cooking, or hong shao, is a technique frequently used in Shanghainese cuisine. The name comes from the color of the soy sauce/crystallized sugar combination in which the meat is slow cooked. Yao Fuzi’s version of hong shao rou was actually one of the best I’ve had in my life (sorry, dad), with a subtly sweet sauce that’s just thick enough to be a gorgeous tasty glaze. It’s a fatty dish, but with pork belly making a come back in haute cuisine (as I’ve had it at both Abacus and the now closed Luqa in the past few months), I think this is a dish that has a lot of popular potential, even in Dallas. The pork belly was balanced by the baby bok choy on the plate, providing a bit of crunchiness and bitterness to contrast with the very rich and tender meat dish.

Yao Fuzi’s excellent rendition of hong shao rou intrigues me to come back and explore other Shanghai specialties on the menu. I’ll probably pass on the xiaolongbao, though, unless they change up that recipe. Yao Fuzi is a bit more expensive than the other Chinese restaurants in town, but it also offers a better atmosphere. Just check out the beautiful stemware and dinnerware presented to us at lunch.

The only other Chinese restaurant (and no, P.F. Chang’s doesn’t count as real Chinese food) in the DFW area that is on par with Yao Fuzi as far as atomsphere goes is New San Dor, but that’s Cantonese, not Shanghainese.

Service was impeccable on this visit. I also appreciated that the waitstaff spoke fluent English so there were no communication problems.

If you’re interested in exploring Shanghai cuisine, Yao Fuzi is an excellent place to start. With a full service bar and non-disposable chopsticks, it’s the kind of place that even your "scared of hole-in-the-wall, shabby chic, mom-and-pop joints" friends can appreciate.