Xu's Wonton House xiao long bao

My first experience of Xiao Long Bao in Canada. Right next door to Bubble Waffle Cafe in Crystal Mall (for which I had a SocialShopper coupon) and based on my dining buddy's recommendation we got XLB there as well.

Eat it fast. Once it got colder, the skin at the bottom stuck to the paper and it tore when we lifted it off.

The denser top where the dough pinches is where you lift it off with your chopsticks. It's freshly steamed so generally too hot to just pop the whole thing in your mouth but you can do that if you wait a couple of minutes -- but you're risking the rest of the XLB being cold. I recommend just diving into them right away. Bite a hole, suck out the juice, eat the rest or pour some of the provided vinegar into it.

I have nothing to compare it to but they were pretty tasty -- both soup and the bao themselves. At $4.55 for 5, they are very cheap, compared to Bao Place for instance.

Lineups are quite long. You get a number, and thankfully they also shout it in English.

In the pictures below, we were overzealous and quickly ate one per steamer before I remembered to take a picture. DUH.

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Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

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