Best of Boston

Boston reps several styles of Chinese cuisine well—we have fiery Sichuan specialists, Taiwanese soup-dumpling pros, and temples to luxurious Cantonese seafood in Chinatown. For the floury, dumpling-heavy cuisine of the north, we head straight to Qingdao. There you’ll find plates of fragrant cumin-laced lamb, crispy pan-fried leek-stuffed pies, and, most important, a massive roster of house-made dumplings in varieties like pork-and-leek and vegetarian string bean.