Arun Gupta in Dissent:
I lead food and history tours around New York City. On a recent tour, I was asked a simple question. Why might the same dish—a sandwich, a slice of pizza, a plate of dumplings—cost three or four times more in one restaurant than in another restaurant a block or two away, and the cheaper version tastes much better?
The question came up in Manhattan’s historic Chinatown while a group of us ate pork and chive, chicken and mushroom, and pork and cabbage dumplings. Everyone agreed they were superb. The skins were silky and gently chewy, the fillings juicy, well-seasoned, and packed with aromatics like chives and ginger. And they avoided the three fatal flaws of dumplings: thick and doughy wrappers, torn skins, and opening when boiled, all signs of poor craftsmanship.
The restaurant was bare bones and dingy. One person said, “I would normally never go into a place like this. How can the food be so good in such a dump?”
The spot, Shu Jiao Fu Zhou, a Fujianese joint on Grand Street near Eldridge, sells six dumplings for $3. Not far away, across Houston Street, lots of restaurants serve dumplings. But six dumplings can cost $15, and they won’t be as tasty as what we ate.
The reason for this divergence in price and quality comes down to how migration, labor and immigration laws, supply chains, and culture all interrelate.
More here.