November 17, 2021
(Courier Post)
Philadelphia resident Eddie Zheng decided to expand his Michelin-recommended restaurant Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao to Towne Place at Garden State Park to bring authentic and traditional dim sum close to home.
Cherry Hill will be the second location for the restaurant, which has served Shanghainese food in Flushing, Queens in New York City, for about 15 years.
Zheng initially had planned to open in Center City as a 20-year resident of Philadelphia. But he considered the pandemic’s effects on the city environment and decided to follow the flow of people in Cherry Hill.
“Because a lot of people will work in Philadelphia but live in South Jersey,” Zheng said. “It’s (Cherry Hill) pretty close to downtown Philadelphia … and has the easy parking.”
Zheng’s restaurant is not the only new addition to the former Garden State Park racetrack. Cherry Hill’s bustling complex continues to add new restaurants and shops.
Joe Morris, executive vice president of M&M Realty Partners, said they have been “seeing an unprecedented” number of additions.
Along with Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao, a lease for Crumbl Cookies has been signed and that business will open in early 2022.
Spread Bagelry, the Philadelphia-bred/Montreal-style bagel shop, is also headed to the shopping center. Morris said they are “working on it and excited about its opening.”
Last year, the shopping center opened TJ Maxx, HomeGoods, Trader Joe’s and a Costco Wholesale store. Leases for Sugar Factory American Brasserie, Wild Fork Foods, a meat and seafood market, and Trinity Rehab were signed.
Sugar Factory is still in the works. Morris said it is in the contracting phase. The Cherry Hill location will be one of 15 new Sugar Factory locations scheduled to open in the near future.
Then at the start of 2021, leases for national food chains Chopt Creative Salad Co., a salad and grain bowl eatery, and &pizza, known for its oblong-shaped pies, were signed.
Soup dumplings are on the menu at Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao in Flushing. Guests can choose from a large selection of steamed broth-filled buns.
There are breakfast items, too, like salt sticky rice roll, scallion pancakes and red bean puff, appetizers like chicken in wine sauce and cucumber salad, a variety of dim sum, noodle soups, fried noodle and fried rice cake dishes and desserts.
With comfortable wooden chairs and tables and red accents throughout the interior, guests can enjoy their soup dumpling experience in a stylish space.
The restaurant’s estimated opening date is July 2022.
Zheng is no stranger to the restaurant industry or South Jersey, as he owns Ten Asian Food Hall across from the shopping center, 40 Tsaocaa Bubble Tea shops and nine restaurants in the Philadelphia area.
So expanding in an area he considers home made sense to Zheng.
“I know the area … I can see that as my second hometown,” Zheng explained. “So I’m trying to bring it to my hometown. And I think that’s better than me bringing it to Florida, Miami, cause I’m not familiar with that area, with that city.”
For Manalapan couple Karen and Darrell Doucette, Garden State Park was the spot for their second Crumbl Cookies location.
“We were just researching areas and Cherry Hill is just an awesome area,” Karen said. “There’s great shopping there already so we thought Cherry Hill would be a great place to bring it to.”
The Douchettes plan to open their first location of the cookie franchise, known for its long list of flavors, in Ocean Township on Dec. 16. They plan to open the Cherry Hill location in February or March 2022.
The shop will have its signature look with a white, black and pink color scheme. There will be six flavors on the menu with milk chocolate chip, chilled sugar cookies and a rotation of about 250 different flavors.
December 17, 2020
(Forbes)
It’s no secret restaurant and food service businesses in America have been devastated by the pandemic. In mid-September, the National Restaurant Association announced that 6 months after the onset of Covid-19, sadly nearly 1 in 6 restaurants (almost 100,000) had closed permanently; nearly 3 MILLION EMPLOYEES were still out of work; and the industry was on track to lose $240 billion in sales by the end of the year.
Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao, from Flushing, Queens Chinatown, considered to have among the best soup dumplings in New York, is selling frozen versions for consumers to steam at home. The frozen dumplings can be picked up at the restaurant or ordered via a food delivery service. Other Chinese and Korean restaurants are doing the same.
December 8, 2020
(Forbes)
Restaurants throughout the country are bracing themselves for a rough winter as concerns for public health and safety could lead to further restrictions on an industry that’s already been hard hit since March.
Operators in New York City, where restaurants can currently seat guests at 25% capacity indoors with a 10 p.m. curfew on dine-in service, fear they will have to close their interior spaces again.
NAN XIANG XIAO LONG BAO in Flushing has also been experimenting with its operations and menu. After closing its doors for less than three weeks during the pandemic, the restaurant, well known for its xiao long bao (soup dumplings), reopened and started selling frozen products for customers to make at home.
The dining spot also implemented “safety protocols including booking nearby hotels and shuttle cars for staff, installing hand sanitizer stations, and creating contactless order and payment systems,” Eddie Zheng, general manager, said in a release.
In addition to releasing new bites such as pan-fried cheese and shrimp dumplings, Nan Xiang launched a limited-time xiao long bao set—the Three Treasures XLB—last month during a one-year anniversary celebration of its new location. The restaurant is hoping the special will draw in diners looking for “Instagram-worthy” dishes to post on social media.
The new soup dumplings have skins with colorful swirls inspired by watercolors. Each color corresponds with a particular filling that contains a Chinese delicacy: green (braised abalone); black (spiny sea cucumber); and red (Chinese-style dry-cured and smoked ham).
May 22, 2020
(The New Yorker)
At a moment when the future feels precarious, there is one thing that reliably brings me a sense of stability. Whenever the mood strikes, and with minimal effort, I can enjoy any of the following: steaming, slippery-skinned xiao long bao, also known as soup dumplings, from Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao, a Flushing restaurant that makes some of the best in the city; warm, craggy butter-crunch cookies from the Good Batch, a Brooklyn bakery known for its ice-cream sandwiches; flaky, coiled burek (a pastry popular in the Balkans, Turkey, and Israel) stuffed with cheese or ground beef, hand-rolled by Balkan Bites, a two-woman outfit that normally sells them at coffee shops and the Queens Night Market.
May 7, 2020
(New York Post)
The city’s property titans are giving back.
F&T Group is paying its award-winning restaurant tenants in Flushing — Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao and Guan Fu Sichuan — to make 1,200 meals for first responders. Executive Helen Lee has delivered some in person.
Also giving back is Rockefeller Group, which is partnering with Nomad’s Bourke Street Bakery to make care packages for frontline heroes.
March 27, 2020
Topping the list is Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao. Recently relocated to Flushing’s One Fulton Square at 39-16 Prince St., Suite 104, this beloved, Michelin-recommended Shanghainese eatery, which specializes in soup dumplings, is the most popular inexpensive specialty food spot in New York City, boasting four stars out of 3,523 reviews on Yelp.
Yelp can tell you a thing or two more about Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao.
“Xiao Long Bao (also known as soup dumplings) originated from Nan Xiang County in Shanghai, China,” the business explains in its Yelp profile. “Our signature dishes include the restaurant’s unrivaled crab and pork soup dumplings, plentiful steamed buns and Shanghainese dim sum. Other popular dishes include crispy noodles, fried rice cakes, scallion pancakes with sliced beef, fish fillet and pickled cabbage noodle soup and pan-fried dumplings.”
February 26, 2020
(Patch)
FLUSHING, QUEENS — Beloved soup dumpling destination Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao will celebrate its grand reopening Friday in downtown Flushing, several months after the original location closed its doors.
The restaurant is hosting a soft opening this week.
Nan Xiang moved just down the street from its location at 38-12 Prince St., which closed in May, to a 5,000-square-foot space in the new mixed-use development One Fulton Square on 39th Avenue.
The restaurant will serve Nan Xiang’s signature crab and pork soup dumplings and Shanghainese dim sum, plus new dishes like colorful “lucky-six” soup dumplings, truffle soup dumplings, crispy turnip puffs, Shanghai siu mai and other seasonal dishes, according to a press release.
NOVEMBER 6 2019
(TimeOut)
Time Out says
The famed soup dumpling restaurant is back in Flushing’s Fulton Square. Colorful juicy dumplings can be eaten in its elegant, newly-updated dining room. Six dumplings come with each order, with ingredients such as squash, crab meat, pork, black truffle, among others.
NOVEMBER 12 2019
(AM New York)
As the Culinary King of Queens, I’m so very fortunate to live in the most diverse and delicious destination in all of New York City. Really I’m not royalty though, I’m an ambassador, and a hungry one at that. Today, we take a trip to Shanghai, China, via the International Express—aka the 7 train—to savor xiao long bao and more at the recently reopened Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao, widely regarded as one of the best places for the juicy soup filled dumplings in all of New York City.
For more than a decade, the restaurant named for the county in Shanghai where dumplings were invented was a favorite of everyone, from the Michelin Guide to celebrity chef and TV personality Eddie Huang.
In an open kitchen, Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao’s crew of ladies delicately folded the dumplings as they greeted customers happy to wait in line to savor some of the city’s best. For a long while, I took Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao for granted, preferring to frequent the neighborhood’s food courts, where there was less of a wait. And then last May, the neighborhood institution suddenly shut down, leaving both New York City’s foodies and local diners devastated.
“Thirteen years ago I was a Nan Xiang customer,” recalls local businessman Eddie Zheng, the man behind the restaurant’s rebirth. “Every time I would eat two orders of soup dumplings.”
Back then there were only two kinds of soup dumplings: pork and pork and crab. Zheng and his team have added four others—black truffle, Chinese squash, chicken, and foie gras — to the xiao long bao roster at the reborn Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao, which opened in One Fulton Square on Nov. 1.
The luxurious dumplings are available as part of “Lucky Six” set that sports jewel toned wrappers. As at the restaurant’s first incarnation, you can watch your dumplings being made in an open kitchen that sits at the center of the 5,000-square-foot space.
“We are so excited to re-open our door to the public and to serve this neighborhood again with a brand-new look,” said Zheng, who personally designed the mountains and trees that grace the restaurant’s lobby. “The original team has dedicated to elevating the menu and the service in the past few months, and it’s finally the time for us to share it with our customers. It’s the new era for this legendary restaurant, and we are so proud to carry the legacy.”
