Wonton Soup…So Much Better than You Think!!!

Here’s the crux of this week’s story: probably the most debased dish of Chinese restaurants in America…wonton soup, for Chrissakes! What serious Sinophile orders wonton soup anymore?…has now become the #1 dish I seek when I journey down to Chinatown in lower Manhattan.

It’s an amazing transformation for me…and I owe it all to one of my favorite Chinatown restaurants today, Yee Li, at the corner of Elizabeth and Bayard.

I have discussed their world-class fried flounder before…but I’ve not discussed in print this “whale” that has been sitting under my rowboat for two years now. I’ve been slurping away wontons without realizing…”Holy mackerel! There’s something BIG here!”

The first time I had wonton soup at Yee Li, about two years ago…I don’t think I ordered it. It doesn’t sound like the kind of thing I’d order. I think a friendly waiter brought it over and said, “Try this.” Yeah, he may have been condescending to the American, whom he figured probably wanted wonton soup. But he didn’t call it “wonton soup,” and it was only later I found out that the restaurant calls it that.

This bowl was fantastic. It’s true that the broth wasn’t as old-time porky as the best broths of my memory—but the ten dumplings in the broth were KILLER!!! When I found out later that the restaurant calls them wontons, I told John Chan (whose grandfather founded Yee Li two generations ago) that these “wontons” were nothing like the “wontons” I normally eat…he said, with a lovely good nature, “That’s because you eat white people’s wontons uptown.”

He was right!!!!!!!! I’ve been going to Chinatown for so long looking for “the real” (usually involving recherché crustaceans and viscera)…that I never noticed there are “real” wontons, too!

What’s the Diff?

Most important Diff: what I now call “real wontons” are filled with a combo of shrimp and pork…not just indifferent ground pork like the “uptown” wontons. At Yee Li, the pieces of shrimp are big. And the tender, chopped pieces of pork are also big. They are crammed into a pleated dumpling that looks little like the “sailor’s cap” kind of dumpling served as wontons in so many Chinese-American restaurants. This “real wonton” is built to crunch and squirt in your mouth. It is a million miles from the flaccid, insipid wontons of my youth.

For me, the last two years have been one Yee Li visit after another.

But silly me. During these years, I made the completely inaccurate assumption that this wonton was unique at Yee Li. It is not, I now know. I have now made the joyful discovery that many restaurants in Manhattan’s Chinatown serve this shrimp-pork wonton. And I am sure that when I hit the road, this’ll be the case as well in Flushing, in San Francisco—in Chinatowns all over the U.S.

I tried to research the subject, to find out the origins of the shrimp-pork wonton. It is a difficult road. Wonton history is shrouded in obscurity. Most scholars believe that the concept of the wonton, ground meat wrapped in dough—either for boiling or frying—was originally a Northern Chinese thing (where noodles are so important). But at some point it migrated to southern China (particularly Guangdong province, which we used to call Canton)—and thence to Hong Kong (not far away) where many street vendors made wonton popular. Of course, both Guangdong and Hong Kong are famous for open-top dumplings called shiu mai…which always contain pork and are always topped by a shrimp…so the shrimp-pork predilection makes sense.

Now, whether the first wonton (closed dumpling) inclusion of shrimp with pork happened in Guangdong or Hong Kong…well, it ain’t easy to say.

But of one thing we can be sure: it was Cantonese immigrants who first brought the shrimp-pork wonton to the U.S., probably just before mid-20th century.

The following paragraph is pure speculation, because the historical file is slim:

I’m guessing that wontons quickly became one of those iconic things in Chinese-American restaurants around the 1940s, just like, say, spaghetti and meatballs did in Italian-American restaurants. But, for various reasons, neither wontons nor spaghetti and meatballs were authentic. You had to go to Little Italy to get more authentic pasta dishes, and you had to go to Chinatown to get more authentic wonton soup.

One amazing personal sidebar: I went to Manhattan Chinatown religiously in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. My Dad and I always ordered “exotic” soups to start the meal, like winter melon soup. We were having none of that wonton stuff. But I now know what I was missing.

I can’t finish this story, of course, without putting my beloved Yee Li in some perspective: now that I know there are more of these “real” wonton soups in Chinatown, do I still think Yee Li has the best?

Last week I spent 4 hours in Chinatown one mid-day, slurping my way through as many bowls as possible. If you want to do the same, keep in mind that only certain kinds of restaurants have the shrimp-pork wonton. You probably won’t find it in Shanghai restaurants, Sichuan restaurants or Hunan restaurants. There’s a very popular type of wonton soup today in Fuzhou restaurants, but it ain’t what I’M talking ’bout. Traditional Cantonese places, usually with the hanging roast ducks in the windows, are your best bets.

To preserve a little suspense, here are my favorite Manhattan Chinatown shrimp-pork wonton soups aside from Yee Li:

 

102 NOODLES TOWN
102 (naturally) Mott Street

 

 

 

Love this place that’s north of Canal St.! Fabulous old-time Cantonese food (including the best roast duck I know in Chinatown today!) The wontons are a little different than most other places, with a finer chop—turning the filling into some kind of delicious shrimp-pork meatball. There’s an odd distribution of meats, as well—some wontons seem to have no shrimp, but some have very large pieces of shrimp. Though quirky, these wontons have a fineness to them I recommend. Bland broth, unfortunately.

 

 

A single 102 Noodles Town wonton

 

NOODLE VILLAGE
13 Mott Street

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m going to spend a lot of time at this discovery in the heart of Mott St.! Well, it ain’t exactly new. But it’s new to me! Open seven years, Noodle Village is a little more modern in feel, a little more creative in food. Not always a bad thing! They call the wonton soup “Shrimp Wonton Soup” (though it has both shrimp and pork). Two shrimp in each wonton, though the shrimps themselves taste a little washed out. The big news here: these wontons are fabulously “crunchy,” tightly rolled, with a chew you can almost hear! The broth tasted more veggie than porky to me.

 

HK WONTON GARDEN
79 Mulberry Street

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heading in to H.K. Wonton

Fast and furious lunch place. I love the tightness of their wontons, but they’re a little grainy inside. There’s an upgrade if you go from the Plain Wonton Soup to what the menu calls Cantonese Dumplings in Soup; the latter dumpling (and it’s just like a wonton) is still a touch grainy, but the wonton is bigger, eggier, with more pleats…and the fabulous earthy inclusion of dried mushrooms!

 

WONTON NOODLE GARDEN
56 Mott Street

 

A mainstay of both locals and tourists on Mott right near Bayard. Wonton central. For me the attraction here is good flavor within the dumpling, accented more than the others by sesame oil. I also like the whole shrimp inside. But the wontons are not quite as tight as others, with fly-away flaps at the edges…and a flat, somewhat fake-tasting broth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the winner is……..

YEE LI!

I tried hard to not let pro-Yee-Li prejudice affect me…but without doubt these were my favorite shrimp-pork wontons on this round! I love the coarseness of the ingredients, with their simultaneous tenderness. I love the flavors, medium-sweet, medium-salty. Chan told me that the meat inside is always raw when the wonton is made, and not marinated, giving the wonton a fresh-meat quality. Lastly, the wontons are made the night before and left to dry, increasing the “crunchy” chew of the thing—and they are always cooked within five minutes of the order, never cooked before and held.

Hie thee to Yee Li (3 Elizabeth Street)!

In my mind…Wonton Soup is baaaaaaaaack!