Little Dumpling vs. Joe’s Shanghai

We’re doing a comparison of Little Dumpling, located on Northern Boulevard in Little Neck, NY, versus Joe’s Shanghai on West 56th Street in New York City.  Both restaurants are known for their soup dumplings but Joe’s Shanghai has been famous for this specialty for a long time.  The soup dumpling is filled with pork or pork and crab with a delicious broth inside the dumpling. When seated at both restaurants, there was NO “kid bias”, so that was good.  We were seated right in the middle of both restaurants.

We did have a favorite of the two restaurants.  We preferred Little Dumpling and would highly recommend that restaurant.  Here are the reasons:

1.  Little Dumpling has a bigger menu with more food to choose from.
2. Little Dumpling is small, but their dining room is clean and modern.  Joe’s Shanghai is worn and didn’t have much of an atmosphere.
3. The waiters at Joe’s Shanghai were not very nice and we felt they just wanted to get us in and out.  We asked to order another basket of soup dumplings and they discouraged us saying it would take too long!  This was not cool at all.
4. The soup dumplings were the same for both restaurants but the other dishes we ate were not very tasty at Joe’s Shanghai.  We asked for the Singapore Noodles to be extra spicy but they had little to no spice and the General Tso’s Chicken was cheap on the chicken with what felt like a half of an order.

Our mom thinks it’s important to let you know that Little Dumpling is cash only.