Bambu Pan Asian Kitchen: The Dumpling House That Learned Chinese in Vietnam and Kashrut in Israel

Four crystal duck dumplings arrive under a lid, their wrappers gone translucent enough that the filling shows through as a dark blur. They cost twenty dollars and ninety five cents, which is more than most kosher restaurants in Miami-Dade charge for a plate of anything steamed, and they are the reason to make the drive. Beyond the table, floral murals climb the walls under warm low lighting, and the takeout counter runs a parallel restaurant of its own: bags going out in a steady line toward the surface lot on NE 163rd Street. It is a Tuesday at half past seven, and Bambu is doing two jobs at once without dropping either.

The menu runs to one hundred and sixty nine items, and the section that matters most is the one most kosher Chinese kitchens leave out entirely. Dim sum here is sixteen dishes deep. Soup dumplings, three to an order, filled with chicken. Chicken shumai with their open tops. Beef gyoza offered both steamed and pan fried, so you can order the same parcel two ways and taste what the pan does to it. Steamed wontons, six of them, with ginger sauce served alongside rather than poured over. And the crystal duck dumplings, which are the single best argument this kitchen makes.