Move over, Din Tai Fung. San Francisco has an impressive new soup dumpling contender

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The latest restaurant to join the crowded ranks of Asian dining options at Stonestown Galleria has diners waiting more than two hours for bamboo baskets of steaming soup dumplings. And no, it’s not Din Tai Fung, the Taiwanese-based chain that’s all but synonymous with xiao long bao, the delicate soup-filled dumplings with a rabid fan base. 

Supreme Dumplings quietly opened in late May and will celebrate its grand opening June 15. The Washington-based chain, known for serving some of the best XLB in the Pacific Northwest, is a Din Tai Fung challenger headed by chef Peter Wang, formerly of the W Hotel in Taipei. Owner Brandon Ting says he chose San Francisco for the company’s first California restaurant because it’s a city that appreciates “authenticity, precision, and flavor.” “Stonestown Galleria stood out to us as a location undergoing a transformation into a culinary hub,” Ting says. “We saw it as the perfect entry point.” 

Fans of Din Tai Fung will notice similarities between the 21-location juggernaut and its smaller competitor, which operates two restaurants in Washington aside from the new San Francisco outpost; it wouldn’t be unfair to think of Supreme Dumplings as Din Tai Fung Light. There’s a smaller menu, but it scratches the same itch. Just like at Din Tai Fung, you can watch through a window as workers cram into a small room at the front of Supreme Dumplings. With deft movements, they roll balls of dough into wrappers, stuff them with filling, then close them with delicate folds. Managing partner Edward Dang says the restaurant has been selling out of hundreds of these morsels at lunchtime. 

Supreme Dumplings doesn’t advertise the exact number of folds used to seal its soup dumplings (18 at Din Tai Fung), but the skins are thin without being so flimsy they tear when you pick them up. In addition to the signature pork XLB, the restaurant offers Szechuan spicy soup dumplings that leave your lips tingling pleasantly, as well as shrimp and pork, crab and pork, chicken, vegetable, and black truffle and chicken varieties. Remarkably, all except the last come in at less than $15 an order, which includes eight dumplings. Each XLB contains a generous amount of soup, part of what sets Supreme apart, Ting says. 

Though you’re certainly there for the precious soup-filled delicacies, you can round out your meal with pan-fried buns, spicy wontons, braised tofu, spicy cucumber salad, and soup, noodles, and rice. Stir-fried green beans come tangled with mushrooms and carrots, while a plate of pork-chop fried rice stars a succulent bone-in cutlet. There are desserts, too, including chocolate XLB, little brown nuggets that taste more appealing than they look. They burst with chocolate syrup as soon as you bite in. Even better are the lava custard buns filled with salted egg yolk and adorned with gold flake, just for fun.  

The restaurant is walk-in only for now, and wait times have stretched as long as two hours — which, for what it’s worth, is exactly how long I waited for a table six months ago at the closest Din Tai Fung, an hour’s drive from the city at Santa Clara’s Westfield Valley Fair.  

Supreme Dumplings has announced plans to open its first restaurant in Seattle proper, plus an outpost in Katy, Texas. Additional California locations are also in the works, mainly at malls managed by Stonestown owner Brookfield Properties. If the San Francisco location is any indication, this might be the beginning of a new XLB heavyweight rising to power.