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The 12 Best Dumpling Cities, Ranked by What I'd Cross a Border For

Twelve of the best cities for dumplings on earth, from soup dumplings to pierogi to momos, ranked by a deeply biased eater on the only scale that matters: would I cross a border for them?

I will be honest with you up front: this is not an objective ranking and I refuse to pretend otherwise. I have built entire trips around a single steamer of dumplings. So when I sat down to find the best cities for dumplings, the only fair scale was a deeply personal one, would I, given the chance, cross an international border just to eat them? Here are twelve cities that earned a place, ranked by exactly that. Saliva-level, ascending.

Pierogi country. The potato-and-cheese (ruskie) ones, fried in butter till the edges crisp, are comfort in dough form. The mushroom ones in winter. Get them at a milk bar, the old communist-era canteens, for almost nothing.

Momos everywhere, steamed or fried, stuffed with buffalo or veg, served with a fiery sesame-tomato achar that I’d drink if it were socially acceptable. The jhol momo, swimming in a spiced broth, is the one I think about.

Khinkali are the giant juicy soup-dumpling cousins of the East, twisted into a thick knot you grip like a handle. You bite, slurp the broth, eat the rest, leave the tough top knot on your plate. Counting them is how Georgians keep score. I lost.

Mandu, fat and pan-fried (gun-mandu) or in soup (mandu-guk). The kimchi ones have a sour kick that cuts the richness perfectly. Gwangjang Market does them by the dozen, hot off the griddle.

Dim sum is the dumpling Olympics, har gow (shrimp), siu mai (pork), the lot, wheeled past you on carts in old-school halls. The translucent shrimp dumpling skin, so thin you can see the pink through it, is a benchmark every other city is measured against.

Empanadas count and I won’t be debating this. The Salta-style ones with juicy beef and a hard-boiled egg, the baked dough blistered and golden, are a national treasure. Every region argues over the crimp. Eat your way through the argument.

Manti, tiny beef dumplings the size of a fingernail, drowned in garlic yogurt and drizzled with paprika butter and dried mint. The patience it takes to fold them that small is a love language. The flavor is bigger than the dumpling.

Spicy. Devastatingly so. The Sichuan zhong dumplings come bathed in sweet-savory chili oil that numbs your lips with peppercorn, and the wontons (chao shou) swim in a red slick you’ll mop up with the last one. Heat as a feature, not a dare.

Gyoza, pan-fried with a lacy crisp skirt, thin-skinned, garlicky, addictive. The Japanese refined the Chinese jiaozi into something with a perfect crunch-to-juice ratio. A plate of these with a cold beer at a tiny counter is one of life’s great cheap pleasures.

Whole banquets of dumplings, dozens of shapes, each made to look like the thing it’s filled with, a little walnut, a tiny duck, a fish. It’s playful and serious at once. And the soup dumplings here hold their own against anywhere.

Din Tai Fung was born here, and the xiao long bao have an eighteen-pleat precision that borders on obsessive. But the real joy is the scruffy local spots doing the same soup dumplings for a third of the price. Bite a hole, sip the broth, don’t burn your tongue (you will, the first time, everyone does).

Where it all clicked for me. The soup dumpling, xiao long bao, in its homeland is a near-religious experience: a delicate pleated parcel holding hot pork and a mouthful of rich, gelatin-set broth that melts into soup the moment it steams. And then there’s sheng jian bao, the pan-fried soup dumpling, crisp-bottomed, sesame-topped, juice-filled, which I would genuinely fly back for tomorrow. The whole city treats dumplings as a craft worth getting right, and they do. This is the one I’d cross every border on the list to reach. Number one, and my biased heart doesn’t even wobble.

So which border am I actually crossing first? Shanghai’s, for sheng jian bao, no hesitation, I’d book the flight tonight. But if you want the single most jaw-dropping bite of your life, get the soup dumplings in Taipei and bite carefully. Now go eat something folded.

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