Good Thing, Small Package
纽约已经被饺子占领

IF by chance you are a lover of dumplings (and really, Anthony Bourdain might have to mount a search party to find someone who isn’t), then consider this a very good time to be a New Yorker.

如果你正好是饺子爱好者（可能需要安东尼·波登[Anthony Bourdain]发起一个派对来调查一下到底谁不爱吃饺子），那现在考虑移居纽约正合适。

Yes, food trends beg to be quibbled over. We grow weary of cupcakes, of meatballs, of the overwhelming ubiquity of bacon. And yet it’s hard to find fault with the recent ascendancy of Asian dumplings on a lot of city menus, in part because it’s hard to snicker at the simple, plump lovability of this globe-spanning culinary trope: the very form of a dumpling, with a hidden knob of flavor all wrapped up in a bow of dough, calls to mind a tiny present that our species has decided to pass along to itself.

是的，对于美食时尚就得百般挑剔。我们厌倦了纸杯蛋糕、肉丸子，还有到处都是的培根。但是最近亚洲饺子开始在纽约的许多菜单上大行其道，却不会让人觉得不妥，部分是因为这种简单丰满的食品太可爱了，实在让人没法挑剔，它所代表的涵义已经传遍全球——面里包着一团香喷喷的馅儿，被捏成船形，给人感觉好像是我们人类送给自己的一件小小礼物。
 

对饺子的新想象。

New York has been a dumpling town for a long time. Up and down the streets of Flushing (and at countless stuffed-pouch shrines like Vanessa’s Dumpling House, Joe’s Shanghai, Nom Wah Tea Parlor, Grand Sichuan, Prosperity Dumpling and M Shanghai Bistro & Garden), diners can feast on platters of two-bite delights while sometimes spending less than you’d pay for a morning cup of coffee.

纽约早就成了一座饺子城。走在法拉盛街头，食客们可以享用大盘大盘的美味饺子，两口就能吞下一个，而价格还没早上买一杯咖啡贵。这里的饺子圣地数也数不清，其中包括瓦妮莎饺子馆(Vanessa’s Dumpling House)、鹿鸣春(Joe’s Shanghai)、南华茶餐厅(Nom Wah Tea Parlor)、大四川(Grand Sichuan)、兴旺锅贴(Prosperity Dumpling)、M上海餐馆与花园(M Shanghai Bistro & Garden)等。

But lately, in Manhattan and Brooklyn and Queens, at spots like Talde, RedFarm, Hakkasan, Danji, the Good Fork, the Hurricane Club, the Rickshaw food truck, Biang! and (at unpredictable intervals) Mission Chinese Food, classic dumpling forms are being executed with meticulous care — and stuffed, pinched and twisted into fresh manifestations.

但是最近，在曼哈顿、布鲁克林与皇后区，塔尔德(Talde)、RedFarm、客家人(Hakkasan)、Danji、好叉子(the Good Fork)、飓风俱乐部(the Hurricane Club)、人力车(Rickshaw food truck)、Biang!以及龙山小馆（Mission Chinese Food ，只是不定期才提供饺子）这些饭馆都小心翼翼地撤下了传统形式的饺子，转而发展出各种新的馅料和形状。

In Park Slope, Dale Talde has engineered one of the most hunted-down bar snacks of 2012, a beer-friendly, street-cart collision known as the “pretzel dumpling.”

在Park Slope，戴尔·塔尔德(Dale Talde)设计出一种2012年最受人欢迎的酒吧小吃，一种名叫“脆饺”(pretzel dumpling)的混搭风味，搭配啤酒极为可口。

Inside, there’s some slightly cured pork. Outside, a process of boiling, brushing, pan-searing and baking creates a skin with the crust and chew of a hot pretzel. The dipping sauce echoes what you might get at a deli, or in a bag full of Chinese takeout: strong mustard.

“脆饺”的馅是微微腌过的猪肉。外皮经过煮沸、上油、煎炸和烘焙，令其结上了一层硬皮，嚼上去又热又脆。蘸的调料和熟食店里的差不多，或者是满满一袋中餐馆常用的外卖调料：口味浓重的芥末。

For Mr. Talde, who grew up in Chicago and comes from a Filipino background, the goal was to summon a dish that represented a spirited take on what’s Asian and what’s American. “For us, it was a perfect way of blending the two,” he said.

塔尔德先生在芝加哥长大，有菲律宾血统，他的目标就是创造出一种生动地融合亚洲与美国特色的菜肴。“对于我们来说，这道菜将二者完美地融合在一起，”他说。

If any place embodies the city’s neo-dumpling ethos, though, it’s RedFarm, whose West Village location has already spawned a forthcoming Upper West Side spinoff. At RedFarm, there are dumplings fashioned to look like Pac-Man characters and horseshoe crabs. There’s also an egg roll stuffed with pastrami.

不过，最能体现纽约饺子新风尚的还要算是坐落在西村的RedFarm，它发展迅猛，即将在上西区开设新的分店。在“RedFarm”，有“吃豆人”(Pac-Man)游戏角色造型的饺子，还有马蹄蟹形状的饺子，以及熏牛肉馅的蛋卷。

“I call them whimsical,” said Ed Schoenfeld, the veteran restaurateur behind RedFarm. Spend an afternoon touring the kitchen, and Mr. Schoenfeld will rhapsodize about the artistry of the chef, Joe Ng. Those batter-crusted crabs might look like a cute gag, but there’s culinary precision (and greenmarket produce) inside them.

“我把它们称为‘异想天开’，”“RedFarm”的老板，餐饮业资深人士艾德·舍恩菲尔德(Ed Schoenfeld)说。他整个下午都在厨房里走来走去，热情地赞美大厨Joe Ng的精湛厨艺。那些面糊外壳的螃蟹看着很好玩，但其实制作起来需要厨师精确操作（以及环保措施）。

One day Mr. Schoenfeld pointed to a bowl of stuffing that Xiao Yan Mei, a prep cook, was smearing into sections of dough with a paddle that looked like a tongue depressor. That bowl held tiny cubes of roasted duck and vegetables — cut into what the French would call a brunoise, Mr. Schoenfeld said — all of which were meant to give the dumpling texture, “rather than having meatloaf inside.”

有一天，预备厨师肖艳梅（音译）正在厨房用一种像压舌板一样的工具把面团压成一段一段的。舍恩菲尔德指着她旁边的一碗馅料，里面是烤鸭丁和蔬菜丁。舍恩菲尔德先生说，这在法国菜里叫做“碎屑”(brunoise)。之所以这样做，“而不是全用肉馅”，是为了给饺子增加质感。

“This has a mouth feel that’s really special,” he said. “Here you can get individual bits of mushroom or sweet carrot or corn,” as opposed to the meat-and-spice mush often found inside a dumpling. “You might be getting yummy duck mush, but you’re not getting this, and there’s an appreciable difference.”

“它的口感非常特别，”他说，“你可以尝到小粒的蘑菇、甜萝卜或是玉米粒的滋味，” 这和普通的肉馅加香料的饺子馅可大不一样。“在别处你也能尝到美味的鸭肉，但你吃不到这个，这可是非常大的差别。”

The current New York dumpling spectrum ranges from hyper-traditionalism to outlandish rule-flouting. Lawrence Knapp, the chef at the Hurricane Club, on Park Avenue South, cranks out unorthodox dumplings that riff on chicken parmigiana, pad Thai, cheesesteak and barbecued pork. “We don’t really strictly follow the guidelines of what makes sense or what a typical quote-unquote Asian dumpling is,” he said. “You can cheat more with the dumplings. You can have more fun with them, and people aren’t really going to criticize it.”

当前纽约的饺子从极度传统到离经叛道，各种形式应有尽有。飓风俱乐部坐落在派克大街(Park Avenue)南段，厨师劳伦斯·纳普(Lawrence Knapp)就做出了一种奇异的饺子，是鸡肉帕尔玛干酪、泰式炒粉(pad Thai)、奶酪牛排三明治和烤猪肉的合体。“我们并不严格遵循典型的所谓‘亚洲饺子’的传统做法，”他说，“包饺子的时候你可以多耍些花招，把它们弄得好玩一点，顾客其实不会批评它的。”

Or you can go the opposite route, as is done at Hakkasan in Midtown, where a sort of special-forces squadron of dim sum creates traditional dumplings with a level of precision that might be expected at an imperial Chinese banquet (with prices to match).

坐落在Midtown的客家人餐厅走的则是截然不同的路线，它拥有一个特别小分队，专门严格按照中国古典皇家宴会标准打造传统饺子，当然价格也是皇家标准的。

For Hooni Kim, the chef at Danji in Hell’s Kitchen, and Sohui Kim, the chef at the Good Fork in Red Hook, Brooklyn, the goal is to take a humble example of Korean street food and unpretentiously elevate it.

坐落在地狱厨房(Hell’s Kitchen)的Danji餐馆的Hooni Kim大厨以及布鲁克林红钩(Red Hook)的好叉子餐馆的Sohui Kim大厨有着同样的目标，他们都想谦逊地展示韩式街头食品，并给它带来实实在在的提升。

“Just wanting to perfect something that is really simple” is how Ms. Kim, from the Good Fork, put it. “What can I do to this already amazing food? How can I one-up this a little bit?”

“我只是希望完善一种非常简单的食品，”好叉子的金女士说，“这种食品本来就很好吃，我该怎么改善它呢？我该怎么让它更胜一筹呢？”

While Mr. Talde has memories of making dumplings with his mother at Christmas, Jason Wang, the 24-year-old entrepreneur behind Biang! and the Xi’an Famous Foods restaurants, remembers doing the same thing with his family around the onset of the Lunar New Year.

塔尔德先生记得以前曾经和母亲一起在圣诞节时包饺子。而“Biang!与西安名吃”(Xi’an Famous Foods)24岁的老板杰森·王(Jason Wang)则回忆起自己全家在农历新年时包饺子的旧事。

“For Asian families, dumplings are something that we all grew up with,” Mr. Wang said. And the notion of inventively “playing around with the dumpling” is overdue, he added.

王先生说，“在亚洲家庭里，饺子陪伴着我们成长。”他又补充道， “给饺子玩点新花样”这样的创新早就该有了。

“For our generation,” he said, “it’s a way of communicating these things to everyone.”

“对于我们这一代人来说，”他说，“创新是把这些东西广泛介绍给所有人的一种沟通方式。”

The dumplings at Biang! (either floating in broth or strafed with generous rivulets of spicy red oil) are stuffed with lamb, as are the juicy ones that can sometimes be found (usually as a special) at Mission Chinese Food on the Lower East Side. There, the chef, Danny Bowien, plays up “the funkiness of the lamb, and the lamb fat,” he said, by cramming the restaurant’s dumplings with cheek meat.

餐厅“Biang！”的饺子（有的是带汤的，也有的是浸在大量辣椒油里的）是羊肉馅的。下东区的龙山小馆有时候也会提供这种味美多汁的饺子，通常是作为特别推荐。厨师丹尼·鲍伊恩(Danny Bowien)为了突出“羊肉的香味和肥腻”，特意用羊臀肉来做饺子馅。

Mr. Bowien has a love/hate relationship with dumplings. The problem, he said (echoing a sentiment that you can hear from chefs all over town) is that they’re way too popular. Popular enough to throw the whole kitchen out of whack.

鲍伊恩先生对饺子有一种爱恨交加的情绪。他说（这种心情全市所有大厨都有），问题就在于饺子现在太流行了，弄得整个厨房都快疯了。

Back in the spring, when the lamb-cheek dumplings were a fixture on the Mission Chinese Food menu, “we would get, like, 16 orders per table,” Mr. Bowien said. “I was like, ‘Really?’ It just got too crazy. After dumpling No. 1,000 goes out the door, I’m like, ‘Uh, let’s make something else.’ ”

今年春天，羊臀肉馅饺子还是龙山小馆的固定菜品，“结果我们会遇到一桌点16份饺子之类的事，”鲍伊恩先生说，“我问：‘真的吗？’真是太疯狂了。等卖出去了1000份饺子，我说：‘啊，咱们还是做点别的吧’。”

At the Good Fork, Ms. Kim didn’t even want to include dumplings on the original menu, even though she had an excellent recipe from her mother. She sees the place as a globe-trotting bistro, not an Asian restaurant per se. But once her pork-and-chive packages made an appearance, with an interior texture expertly softened by lacings of silken tofu, it seemed there was no turning back, especially after she won a dumpling cook-off on “Throwdown With Bobby Flay.”

好叉子的金女士一开始根本不愿把饺子加入菜单，尽管她的菜单是从母亲那里传下来的，非常出色。她觉得好叉子本质上应该是一个世界性的饭馆，而不是一个亚洲饭馆。但后来她的猪肉洋葱馅饺子（馅里精心掺有少量柔软的豆腐）一亮相，好像就没有回头路了，特别是她还在“和鲍比·弗雷一起加油”(Throwdown With Bobby Flay)饺子烹饪大赛里获了大奖。

“After ‘Throwdown’ aired, all week I was like, ‘I hate dumplings,’ ” she said. “People came in just to get the dumplings. People would say, ‘Can I get 20 dozen in a box?’

“‘加油’上了电视以后，整个星期我都在说‘我讨厌饺子’，”她说，“人们都是一进来就要饺子，张嘴就是‘20打饺子，打包带走’。”

“But I kept them on the menu. I just couldn’t disappoint people.”