Shanghai Eats: Dongbei Four Seasons Dumpling King

I have a confession to make. Sometimes I'm a really shitty friend. Like the time I laughed so hard I practically hyperventilated when K was bitten by a monkey in rural China. Or the time I accidentally made him, a strict vegetarian, eat shrimp dumplings.

Ok, so maybe I'm only a bad friend when it comes to poor K.

Anyhow, while K was visiting us in March, we had a craving for dumplings and decided to check out Dongbei Four Seasons Dumpling King. I'd heard rave reviews from friends about the place and figured it was worth a shot.

Our first issue came about when ordering. You see, you order dumplings by the liang, a traditional Chinese measure of weight equivalent to about 50g. The problem is, I didn't know this. And liang sounds an awful lot like liăng, which is the word for two in Chinese. So instead of ordering 15 dumplings, I somehow ended up with 45. Whoops.

 

Going in, I knew that despite the name, the vegetarian three delicacies dumplings contained shrimp. We ordered some along with the vegetarian mushroom and bok choy and figured we should be fine. What I didn't expect was that everything would be thrown together on one plate, making for a guessing game of what you were about to put in your mouth.

K lost after about the third round of guessing and ingested a shrimp dumpling. At least he said it was good.

There are numerous branches of Dongbei Four Seasons Dumpling King around town. I visit the one closest to me in Xuhui.

Address: 1791 Huaihai Xi Lu, near Wanping Lu

淮海中路1791号, 近宛平路