The Shanghai Soup Dumpling Index

Update: As of Fall 2024, we are reducing the price of this product to the Gumroad minimum. Given how fast Shanghai changes, this Index is no longer useful as a guide to Shanghai soup dumpling shops; since its release, approximately 80% or more of the listed restaurants have gone out of business (and been replaced by new soup dumpling brands). As such, this product is still useful as a reference for how to evaluate soup dumplings and as an idea about data visualization but should NOT be relied on to develop an eating itinerary in Shanghai.

For further inquiries, please see stcavishandco.com, my food research and consultancy company that also does private tours in Shanghai and beyond.

An all-new Index will be released in Spring/Summer 2025.

The original 2015 text is below:

The Shanghai Soup Dumpling Index is a scientific investigation into the quality of soup dumplings in Shanghai. It applies a quantitative framework to the existing qualitative descriptors of the Shanghai soup dumpling (hereafter referred to as “xiao long bao”): thin skin, plentiful soup, abundant filling, fresh meat (皮博 汁多 馅大 肉鲜). A total of 52 restaurants were sampled for this index between December 2013 and October 2014 in Shanghai, People’s Republic of China.

The Index is comprised of two A3-size (11"x17") PDF documents: a Visual Index, which presents the results as an infographic, and the Full Index, which includes a full methodology of the process, a quantitative analysis of the effect of time post-steaming on a dumpling, a list of all restaurants sampled (including directional information for all 18 Class A and Class B restaurants) and more. Together, the Shanghai Soup Dumpling Index can serve as both a guide for where to well-engineered soup dumplings in Shanghai and a comprehensive assessment of such establishments in the city.

METHODOLOGY, SUMMARY:

Four measurements were collected: the weight of the intact dumpling (g); the weight of the soup (g); the weight of the filling (g); and the thickness of the skin (mm). This data was then calculated with the formula [(Filling + Soup / Thickness of Skin)*100] to assign a score representing the quality of structural engineering, the major challenge in the construction of a xiao long bao that meets the colloquial standards.