Good Taste: Scallion pancakes with a beefy bonus

Another month in Chinatown, another new place for soup dumplings.

Just a few years ago these Shanghai delights - a.k.a. xiao long bao - were a novelty here.

But Chinatown is in the midst of such rapid evolution, these broth-filled beggar's purse wonders have become a fixture on many menus - not to mention cartooned across the sign above month-old ShangHai 1, a stylish former bubble-tea house turned restaurant on 10th Street.

As expected, the soup dumplings are pretty good (even if some were too delicate to hold their juice).

Unexpectedly, the rest of this broad multiregion menu proved more intriguing, from the spicy mini-woks of Sichuan dry-panned chicken to juicy Shanghai mock duck, and especially, a tasty Taiwanese twist on scallion pancakes, which rolls soy sweet slices of tender beef inside those crispy, flaky pancakes - a novel dish I haven't seen elsewhere.

Yet.

- Craig LaBan
Beef scallion pancakes, $5.95, ShangHai 1, 123 N. 10th St., 267-457-5363.