Joe's Shanghai, Chinatown

Crab [Soup] Dumplings, Pork [Soup] Dumplings, Scallion Pancakes, Crispy Beef

Other than possibly nostalgia I can't possibly understand the appeal of this place.  Even that implies that you had at least one good experience in the past.  Let me just explain one thing: this was one of our first restaurants together in New York. J was referred by an NC friend, and to be honest we didn't actually go to Joe's Shanghai but rather Joe's Ginger just down the street. They are essentially the same, and I'm sure "Joe" opened the Ginger to meet with the demand.  The dumplings are more akin to buns, and their claim to fame is of course the internal soup.  Word of warning: don't bite immediately into them.  They're served with spoons for a reason!  Take a nip and then slurp out the innards.  The secret is just that the meaty broth is first mixed with gelatin, cooled, and then reheated once safely inside the bun.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Devoting more of a paragraph to this place would be doing it too much service.  Personally, I thought everything inside the buns was burnt.  I kept asking J why he didn't taste that charred, smokey off-taste.  He said they were fine and consistent with his other visits (it was only my second visit).  The scallion pancakes were alright, I guess.  The crispy beef was as good but no better than standard takeout General Tso's.  Oh, and it was inexplicably 3x the price as the other three things.  We were sat with two other groups, which is fine for Chinatown, but the service was unforgivable.  I've never felt more inappropriately shepherded into and away from our table.  They should have fed us in a trough.  It was worse than the Times Square Red Lobster...and I've been there multiple times (a story for another time)! Needless to say, I cannot faithfully recommend Joe's Shanghai to anyone for any reason.