By Danny Bloom
CHIAYI CITY, TAIWAN — When I first landed on these colorful, picturesque shores about a decade or so ago, one of the first dishes I sampled at the local dumpling joint was something the waitress called “shalom pow.” At least, to my non-tonal and 1950s Hebrew School ears, it sure sounded like she said “shalom pow.” I knew I was in Taiwan, and I knew that people did not speak Hebrew here, but my ears told me otherwise.
I politely asked the owner of the place to write down the words in Chinese script so I could later study the words up close and personal with a Chinese-language dictionary in front of me. But for the remainder of the meal, I lovingly called these tasty dumplings “shalom pow” dumplings, and to this day, I still call them that!
In Chinese Mandarin, they are actually called ”xiao long bao,” or in an alternative spelling as I prefer, “shiao lone pow.” That is what is sounds like, at any rate, to my atonal and aging ears. These “shalom pows” are savory dumplings filled with soup and nuggets of pork, but for those who keep kosher or ”halal” — there are now quite a few Moslems from Indonesia working in Taiwan now as day laborers and nurses — you can order your dumplings with beef or vegetarian fillings. Still, whatever is inside these “shalom pows’, they’re to die for!
In my local town, the dumplings are delicious, but when I want the real thing, I take a four-hour train ride north to Taipei where the Din TaiFung dumpling restaurant — famous for a rave New York Times “shalom pow” review in 1993 which put the place on the international dumpling map — sits along a busy shopping and office street.
I arrived at around 11 o’clock on a Friday morning to stake my place in the line that forms every day at the entrance to Din Tai Fung. It’s that popular, especially with the lunch crowd, and the dinner crowd as well. When I got there by taxi from the Taipei Train Station, there were already about 30 people in front of me.
So I waited and waited, reading an old copy of the New York Times weekly edition while standing up, and savoring the savory smell of the food cooking inside. Waiting is a state of mind. When you wait for “shalom pow,’ time flies by because you know you are going to sit downfor a taste of Taiwanese paradise in just a few minutes or so.
How to eat “shalom pow” dumplings. I use chopsticks and a spoon. First I dip my dumpling in a small, shallow, side dish of vinegar full ofsliced ginger pieces, using my chopsticks for the maneuver, and then I place the inviting dumpling on a spoon. I then poke a hole in the skin to let some of the piping hot broth spill out, before digging into the dumpling, which is about the size of a ping pong ball. Sometimes I eat the entire ”shalom pow”, sometimes I just nosh on half of it and save the next half for my second bite. There are no rules here.
If you ever go to eat at the real Din Tai Fung in Taipei, you can see a glass-walled open kitchen where the white-hatted Taiwanese chefshand-make the dumplings in full view of the public. That’s what they call a ”mouth-watering” display of Taiwanese culinary art.
And now you know why in Taiwan, ”shalom pow” is my cup of tea. Maybe I got the exact name and pronunication wrong, but they sure taste like “shalom pow” to me! And down the hatch they go, every time.
Shalom!
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Bloom is Taiwan bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com