The 19 best dumplings in NYC right now

This Flushing stalwart is tucked neatly into the basement of Golden Shopping Mall, a bustling Main Street food court. Dumplings are almost all made-to-order, with varieties ranging from the conventional pork and chive to the must-order lamb and squash and beef and turnip.

Unlike neighboring establishments, Wilson Tang's tea parlor and dim sum haunt (the oldest in New York City) eschews pushcart brunch service for an all-day, cooked-to-order operation. Still, traditional recipes remain, such as the refreshingly light, crowd-favored shrimp and snow pea leaf dumplings encased loosely in a slightly translucent rice wrapper.

The famous wontons with hot sauce—no. 6 on the menu—are reason enough to make the trek to Flushing, Queens. For a reasonable price, this hallowed dumpling haven serves up 12 wispy-skinned pork and cabbage wontons swimming in a surprisingly temperate sea of chili oil, roasted chilies and pickled greens.

No dumpling crawl would be complete without a visit to this Lower East Side linchpin. Insiders flock to the bare-bones, in-and-out eatery for dirt cheap plates of handmade pork and chive dumplings. A plate of six will run you under $3, but at prices this low, you might as well throw down an extra dollar for 10.

This Uyghur cafe invites you to think outside of the dumpling wrapper. Try the manty, a spiced meat-stuffed dumpling, or the fried pelmeni, a Russian dumpling served slippery and soaked in butter. Uyghur food is hard to find, even in a city as big as New York; it’s well worth a trip to Brighton Beach for a taste of the chewy, hand-pulled dough. 

Specializing in traditional Shanghai street food, this Fulton Mall offshoot is a much-welcomed addition to a neighborhood food scene that struggles to offer anything beyond Shake Shack. The sizable blue crab and pork soup dumplings come four to an order, filled with a steaming hot, sweet and savory crab-pork bath and sealed tight by supple dough with an orange tip.

In a neighborhood teeming with hanging ducks and spareribs, this vegetarian-focused dim sum house is certainly a sight for sore eyes. The oversized spinach dumplings arrive three to an order and the verdant, leaflike wrapping is a good indicator of what’s to come—hearty bites of minced spinach enlivened by generous douses of malty Chinese vinegar.

Bánh bột lọc, Vietnamese dumplings wrapped in translucent tapioca paper, shine on Van Da’s menu. Filled with shrimp and pork, as is traditional, and served in banana leaves, they offer a distinctive chew from the tapioca wrapper. Fried dumplings, hiding savory mung beans beneath a layer of golden mochi and crispy shallots, are a must-order, too. 

This Flushing-born Chinese chainlet hawks the traditional cuisine of Xi'an, an ancient city in north-central China that was once a vital part of the Silk Road trade routes. Lamb is a focus on the menu, as seen in a classic Chinese recipe for dumplings stuffed with ground lamb meat, served in a spicy-sour sauce and topped with fragrant fresh cilantro.

Head to the counter at this low-key dumpling house where the soup dumplings and potstickers pair perfectly with whatever you’d like to BYOB. The hand-made crab dumplings, served in a crab-pork broth, are the top pick, and a few orders of crispy jiaozi for the table make it a satisfying, affordable first stop before a night out in the Village. 

This hyped Williamsburg restaurant has a Manhattan locale, too. Order the wok-seared long dumplings with Berkshire pork, the vegan bok choy potstickers, and the broiler chicken dumplings with cinnamon red oil.

There's no shortage of no-frills, cheap dumplings in Sunset Park, but this dollar dumpling counter ranks among the best in all of New York. Find those greasy, crispy-on-the-outside, steamy-on-the-inside pork dumplings at a pocket-friendly price.

Famed for its wonton noodle soup, this Chinatown noodle house folds a whole piece of shrimp into each Hong Kong-style pork wonton. Floating in soup with springy yellow egg noodles, the wontons form a delicious vessel for soaking up the sweet chicken broth.

Avoid the painfully long wait and plan your trip to this super affordable Michelin-starred restaurant during off-hours. With dozens of dim sum plates available, there’s no wrong choice, but we’ll happily order seconds and thirds of the ever-expanding, paper-thin steamers bulging with succulent shrimp and verdant chives.

This sister-owned, scratch-made Taiwanese dumpling house proudly stuffs each pocket with high quality meat and produce hailing from small, sustainable family farms in upstate New York. Signature flavors like the chicken and zucchini and “mighty veggie” are available year-round, while out-of-the-box special offerings like kung pao chicken change each month. When in doubt, order the 50/50, which includes two signature flavors of your choice.

A red-and-white color scheme spruces up this Chinatown dim sum joint, where dumplings (more than 24 types) are the focus. A neophyte-friendly menu is divided into categories like “fried,” “baked” and “steamed”; to avoid tough decisions, order the dim sum platter, where the artful array of ten items includes juicy shrimp and curry beef dumplings.

With wooden tables and red gingham seats, Joe Ng and Ed Schoenfeld’s perpetually packed West Village eatery has a modern farmhouse look to match the menu. Here, the kitchen's greenmarket ethos is applied even to a traditional soup dumpling recipe: The dumpling skin is made with saffron and leek, while the filling is a mix of fresh crab, pork, mushroom and yellow leeks.

With a wide variety of xiao long bao—dumplings prepared in a bamboo steamer basket—you can go for the super spicy, salty egg yolk or black truffle dumplings. The crispy pan-fried pork dumplings, which come six to an order, are a must-eat, too; they serve as the perfect vessel for sopping up excess chili oil and tangy black vinegar.

Fans of Chinatown’s dumpling stands can finally get their fix all over town. Vanessa Weng, owner of Vanessa’s Dumpling House and Tasty Dumpling, has five locations of Vanessa’s where you can sample her handmade dumplings.