The Bao

The Bao lives up to its name by serving five different types of xiao long bao: pork, crab and pork, super spicy, wasabi, and chocolate. Hands down the best soup dumplings in the East Village and among the top soup dumplings in NYC. Everyone comes here for the soup dumplings and stays for the soup dumplings, but there are a variety of noodle, rice and meat dishes to choose from if you aren't feeling soup dumplings.

See their website for the full menu

Get dessert first and order these Nutella and banana soup dumplings before you even look at the menu.

Pork wontons in chili oil. One of the best we've ever had. Even if you aren't a "spicy food person", these should be on your table.

These Happy Hedgehogs will make you very happy that you ordered them. They are cute, they are vegetarian, they are sweet...what more could you want?

1. We had to devour most of the Shanghai pan fried noodle mound before capturing this picture. These noodles look like the noodles you'd find in every Asian restaurant to ever serve a noodle dish, but somehow these noddles are different, these noodles are better. 2. Well above average pork soup dumpling. For all of the soup dumpling aficionados out there, these dumplings have a slightly thinner and more delicate skin than the other great soup dumplings that can be found at Drunken Dumpling and Joe's Shanghai.