It is almost perverse how much I crave a good xiaolongbao. There are few moments more highly anticipated than seeing my order slowing coming from the kitchen to my table, in a stack of steaming baskets. The dumplings are all beautifully pleated at first, enticing but prim. But when picked up by chopsticks, they become so bulging with savory broth, held back by so thin of a wrapper, that they are begging for you to unleash their juicy insides.

That said, there are few things more frustrating than xiaolongbao that don't satisfy.

If I were in Taipei there is no question that I would make a beeline to is the flagship Din Tai Fung, hailed by many afficionados as the xiaolongbao mecca. But since I'm in Shanghai, I decided to try out the Din Tai Fung at Xintiandi, expecting it to be at least as good as Beijing's Shin Kong Place branch. This is, after all, the city that claims xiaolongbao as a native dish.

I have eaten Hong Kong-style French toast many times before, but not this variation.

In Hong Kong, French toast can range in thickness from regular sliced bread to John Grisham paperback. Usually it's topped with butter, peanut butter or sweetened condensed milk, or all three. And sometimes pork floss. And every once in a while, you come across bread on steroids, like the one I ordered yesterday at Lisboa, a Macanese restaurant in Shanghai.

It was a block about half the size of your average loaf, overloaded with black sesame and with specks of bacon. The top was buttered, slit in Tic-Tac-Toe fashion, and browned to the crispness that I liked. And it came with a trio of dipping sauces: honey, sweetened condensed milk, and melty vanilla ice cream. 

Two months later and I'm still fantasizing about this maeun-tang, or spicy fish soup. 

Cod and a few clams in a Korean chili paste-laced broth and topped with shiso leaves: this is a poor woman's seafood heaven. I ate a version of this soup practically every day in Seoul, the best one from a restaurant on the second floor of Seoul's Noryangjin Fish Market. For spice fiends, it's hard to resist a bubbling hot, fiery red soup that comes with its own burner.

While Noryangjin is lesser known than Tokyo's famed Tsukiji fish market, it rivals Tsukiji in sheer size. You can bet most of Seoul's restaurants source their fish from this wholesale arena. My photos can't do justice to the sprawling market, the rows and rows of exotica in my landlubber's eyes.

(So although these photos are a couple months old, now that I finally retrieved them from the USB card reader screw-up I couldn't resist sharing them. Due to painfully slow internet, I only uploaded a few here; the rest can be viewed in my Flickr set.)

We went in the mid-afternoon and were spared the crowds. These crabs were mere minutes of steaming away from being supper. 

Xiaolongbao, those glorious steamed dumplings with a meat and soup filling, have migrated far beyond Shanghai and gained a cult following. Meanwhile, another obsession-worthy Shanghainese specialty has remained a local secret.

Shengjian bao, they call it here. Think of it as a fried version of xiaolongbao. Well, a bun, really. A soup bun that is pan-fried until the bottoms are just crisp and the sesame seeds and chives on top meld into the crunchy casing.

When I come to Shanghai I get my shengjian bao from two places. One is in the French Concession, a 3-minute walk from where i usually stay. The baozi aren't spectacular, but they're great for a cheap lunch or hunger fix. The other is the venerable and endearingly misspelled Yang's Fry-Dumpling, just north of People's Square and right across the street from another cheap-eats institution. If you eat shengjian bao only once in Shanghai (or twice, or thrice), do so at Yang's.

Chowing down on shengjian bao is trickier than on xiaolongbao. First,the thick crunchy casing is such a good insulator that the soup is still piping hot 10 minutes after you sit down. Burnt tongues are common, but worth dealing with.

I was on a sugar high during my stay in Hong Kong. I blame the milk tea.

Hong Kong-style milk tea is in a class of its own, different from other forms of milk tea you're likely to encounter. Also called pantyhose milk tea or silk stocking milk tea, it gets the signature intense, smooth flavor from the being strained back and forth through a long cloth sieve that resembles women's stockings. In this episode of an HK food show on Youtube  (in Cantonese only), the proprietor of one shop explains how he uses a blend of six types of tea leaves and boils and strains the tea eight times. At the end, evaporated milk and a heaping spoonful of sugar is mixed in to create the final cup of pure caffeinated bliss.

Granted, pantyhose milk tea, known as "si mut naai cha" in Cantonese, can get a bit heavy at times. But for me, it's about as addictive as Vietnamese coffee and Thai iced tea. Since I can't get milk tea this good in Beijing, I spent my trip in Hong Kong indulging in this thick, sweet concoction in almost every shape and form.

Compared with other business districts around the world, Hong Kong's Central is one of the few that offer food as good as what you would find in more chowhoundish neighborhoods. (To think of all those lunches breaks in New York when I had to rely on the same halal vendor...) On this past trip I spent a good portion of my time there, trying new spots and revisiting favorites (okay, and shopping too.)

Mak's Noodles (Mak Kee) on Wellington Street is an old HK standby. As with most popular  establishments, it's impossible to ignore the write-ups they taped to their windows and under the glass table tops, including one about a visit from Anthony Bourdain. You can get a bowl of just wontons, all containing one tightly packed shrimp with no pork filler, or have wontons with very fresh and springy egg noodles, the type I crave intensely after a long absence from Hong Kong.

Their shui gaow are looser, with shrimp, bamboo, and wood ear. The broth is also quite nice, flavored with dried fish and shrimp and garnished with yellow chives. The only caveat is the small portion size, about half of what you normally get from wonton noodle shops, and the relatively expensive price of $26 to $28 a bowl. On my next trip I need to try Tsim Chai Kee just across the street, supposedly another good spot, with much bigger bowls of wontons at just $16.

I recently took a much needed break from Beijing and blogging and headed to Hong Kong. Oh, how I missed good Cantonese food.

Upon my arrival in the hot and muggy city my uncle gave me two suggestions for food.

"Do you want to go to a nice air-conditioned dim sum parlor, or an outdoor dai pai dong where we'll sit on hard plastic stools and be insanely sweaty and uncomfortable?" Given that I had just been through an ordeal that involved missing my overnight train, buying an over-priced same-day plane ticket to Guangzhou, bussing to Zhongshan to see my parents for a night, then bussing 4 hours to Hong Kong, I decided to postpone roughing it to another day.

The next night, after two long showers and lots of sleep, I was ready for some cheap outdoor grub. The term dai pai dong in Hong Kong refers to open-air food stalls (though it's easy nowadays to find indoor ones). Diners sit at folding tables on cheap plastic stools, eat from cheap plastic plates and bowls, and enjoy no break from the ever-present humidity in Hong Kong. That said, the food is often delicious, the atmosphere quite rowdy and social, and most importantly for my uncle, smoking is still allowed.

I was hesitant to visit a restaurant owned by a Taiwanese pop star. In the US, celebrity-backed ventures are usually failures with seriously bad food. It didn't help that one online reviewer mentioned that the décor was "over the top."

"Really?" I asked my friend, who usually prefers threadbare restaurants where one can feast like a king for next to nothing. He insisted we try, because it was listed on his Beijing map. 

I guess Taiwanese celebs know their food better than their American counterparts. We ended up having a pretty good meal of mostly Yunnan and Guizhou food. One dish I liked in particular were fava beans with Yunnan goat cheese. I had mentioned Yunnan goat cheese before, from a restaurant I have come to despise because of the horribly rude (even for Beijing) service.

Rǔbǐng (乳饼) is the only Chinese cheese I know of that is widely known and popular, at least in China. It's delicious when pan-fried, with a sprinkle of sugar or salt and pepper on top. In the fava bean dish, it was steamed and dressed with a mellow rice wine sauce. Simple, and a great rice accompaniment.

...is next to impossible, I have discovered. It seems that when eating out during the next two weeks, you need to carry not only a ton of cash, but also a stiff jaw that doesn't drop upon receiving the final bill.

I understand prices always rise during such high-profile events, and I'm sure in Athens, Torino, and Sydney more than a few locals simply stayed home more than usual. But I was ((and still am) determined not to become a hermit during the biggest party in China's 5,000+ years of history. 

So I have sucked it up and tried to forget the almost doubling of prices at my local (albeit quite famous) Peking duck place. And the $12 Carlsberg and $11 Evian on "Sanlitun Super Bar Street" I just attributed to the area being a tourist magnet. But two nights ago we headed to Duck de Chine, an elegant new Peking duck restaurant whose bird a trusted foodie friend said was on par with my current favorite Da Dong's, and about the same price of around 200 RMB ($29) per duck including pancakes and condiments. 

After we got seated, however, we learned that they were only offering 3- to 4-course set menus for the duration of the Olympics, at the equivalent of $124 a person (!!!) In China. For New York prices.

A foodie's guide to Beijing that I wrote and photographed is in this month's Theme, a glossy culture and lifestyle magazine out of Brooklyn. As part of their Olympic issue, they have contributions from a bunch of Beijingers, including gallery recs from the art editor of Time Out Beijing and club recs from the sound engineer of D-22.

If you're in Beijing or plan to go soon, check out the guide, complete with street food introductions, Chinese and Western restaurant recommendations, and photos from Appetite for China. There are also a few recommendations from two other correspondents as indicated by **. I don't vouch for the spots personally, but to each his own taste! Bon appétit, or 干杯 (gan bei).