East Harbor Seafood Palace

Given the way eager crowds breathlessly push to get in the door on weekend mornings, this Sunset Park hall, reliably dishing out buns since 2008, seems more like a Manhattan hot spot than an outer-borough stalwart. The wait for a table can extend into hours, and once seated, it’s jostle-or-be-jostled in the hangarlike dining room jam-packed with local families. The mania makes sense once the dishes start appearing, though. Steamer carts move fast, and snap decisions usually result in fortuitous discoveries. Glutinous flour dumplings (chaozhou fun guo) stuffed with pork, peanuts and mushrooms have a sweet, nutty flavor—a reminder that Southeast Asia isn’t that far from Hong Kong. The braised bean-curd-skin rolls (pei guen) are drenched with a thick coating of sweetened soy sauce that’s soaked up by the fine, crinkly tofu wrap. Fresh noodle wraps (ji si fen juan), stuffed with spears of chicken, celery and carrot, and sliced maki-style, may have a precious presentation, but it’s worth using roughhouse tactics (if needed) to snag them off a cart.