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The first in the Joe's Shanghai mini-empire, which has expanded from Flushing to four locations across the city (the most famous is the one on Chinatown's Pell Street) is clean, well lit and minimally decorated, with ornate accents bordering the dark wood tables and chairs, and a few fish-themed Chinese prints. The restaurant's signature dish is soup dumplings, which it claims to have created. Taking the medicinal mystique of soup quite literally, the dumplings look like doll-sized hot-water bottles. Biting the corner off unleashes a piping hot torrent of ultra-savory broth that, when sipped away, reveals a meaty treasure of pork or crab. They don't disappoint the intrepid, and the crowds waiting for tables eye the bamboo steamers enviously. The rest of the menu is less surefire, but manages to keep your attention with dishes such as tiny, mild eel with sliced chives, minced pork with jalapeño and finely-shredded bean curd, and spicy buffalo carp belly. — Justin Hartung

How do they get the soup inside those dumplings? Easy: They thicken it with gelatin and put it in solid. Then, when the dumplings are steamed, voila: soup!

Pork soup dumplings, $5.05; crab soup dumplings, $7.20