That the dumplings at Mount & Bao are delightful comes as no surprise, given the overlap in ownership with Little Ting’s Dumplings in Greenwood. Best steamed, but also available pan-fried, the dumplings come in many varieties, from pork and fennel to beef and onion to tofu and carrot. This Lake City shop also offers delicate xiao long bao and sheng jian bao to boot.

Fans flock to this well-known chain for baskets of xiao long bao made with Kurobata pork. They’re fantastic, even if they lack the tell-tale droop and hot broth found at DTF’s home in Taiwan. The shrimp and pork shao mai, which carry the combined flavor of land and sea, are another gorgeous choice amidst a wider selection of dumplings, buns, and wontons.

You never know what kind of dumplings you might see on Revel’s menu (breakfast sausage wontons and shrimp and bacon wontons appear on occasion, while dumplings with sweet corn, black bean and coconut were a previous favorite), but the mainstay has been short rib wontons with chili oil and fried garlic. The meat is seasoned and ground in-house, and the chili oil is seductively smoky with the garlic nice and crunchy.

Crowds come to the counter of Xiao Chi Jie for the fried soup dumplings known as sheng jian bao. Massive pans facilitate the production of large numbers of these juicy pork buns, crisped on one side and topped with black sesame seeds and a sprinkling of green onions. Wonderful but certainly messy, diners eat these explosive dumplings at their own risk. (The other main menu item is xiao long bao, but the sheng jian bao are the better bet.)

The Hue dumplings known as banh bot loc are made from tapioca starch, filled with shrimp and pork, and garnished with ground shrimp and green onions. Translucent and chewy, dip them into Huong Binh’s savory nuoc cham sauce that’s sweet, spicy, and addictively pungent. (If you want to grab and go, you can also find banh bat loc at the Vietnamese delis close to Huong Binh in Little Saigon.)

There’s a good reason why so many people have been squeezing into Mike’s Noodle House for all these years: The restaurant's wonton and sui-kau soup offers the boldest broth in the area, the perfect bath for the high quality dumplings. Even better, the combination wonton and sui-kau soup gets you both dumplings and noodles in the same bowl.

On the menu, the description for Momosan’s pork gyoza reads simply: pan-fried pork dumplings served with scallion ginger. But these gyoza are pretty special. They come sizzling in a small Staub cast-iron rectangular pan, the captivating brown color indicating perfection in searing to a crisp texture. You can get soy sauce, but you might not need it, as the scallion-ginger topping is that good.

You can find mandu at many of the Korean restaurants in the Seattle area, but you’ll find a slew of different dumplings at Korean-Chinese MyungIn Dumplings in Federal Way. There are a variety of steamed and fried dumplings, including a spicy steam roll dumpling with pork and shrimp, but the specialty of the house are the “King” steamed dumplings filled with pork and vegetables or the more tantalizing pork and kimchi.