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Hands down, Dumpling House is the best deal in Chinatown. Everything is cooked before your eyes and nothing costs more than three bucks. You can fight for a counter seat—there are only six—but you're better off getting in line and ordering at the takeout window. The best of the menu's twenty-three options is the chives and pork fried dumplings: With the crispy fried crust, the interior just hot enough to bring out the pork's juices, the crunch of the chives, and the price (five for $1), you may want several dollars' worth. Sesame pancakes are huge, fluffy discs nearly the size of a manhole cover, baked fresh every few minutes, then cut into wedges and stuffed with fillings reminiscent of Vietnamese bahn mi sandwiches, like tuna mixed with carrots, soy sauce, peas, and mayonnaise, or with thin, fatty slices of smoked beef. The noodles with mashed sesame sauce are best avoided. Other tasty selections include combinations of broth, noodles, and dumplings; various flavored soups; and, when you're lucky, pork fried buns or stuffed pancake with pork and Chinese vegetables. A takeout container of refreshingly cool, almost grassy soybean milk is a great top-off to a meal. — Timothy Cooper

You can buy frozen packages of the same dumplings you're eating hot: Chives and pork boiled, chives and pork fried, or vegetable and pork boiled are priced at 50 for $8 or 100 for $15. Vegetable dumplings cost slightly more.

Chives and pork fried dumplings, $1; eight vegetable boiled dumplings, $2; sesame pancake with beef, $1.50; sesame pancake with tuna fish, $1.50

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• Cheap Eats Guide 2006 (8/7/06)