Wu's Shanghai Dumpling(Edison) 上海小笼 — Restaurant in Edison

Take out only. Due to their pre-pandemic popularity persisting to this day, be prepared to arrive at the appointed pickup time to potentially wait longer in the car. That can depend on when, what and how much is ordered. In my case with an order of 9 items, waited an extra 5-10 min for 3 noodle soups an hour before closing. That seems to be because their noodles are made and prepared in-house (judged from personal noodle making attempts + the irregularity and bite of their noods). Props to them for the extra effort.

There is a SLIGHT difference in some of their food compared to pre-pandemic, and I didn't recognize anyone working inside, so I wonder if management changed at some point. Everything is still largely the same though, which is quite an impressive feat, and continues to range from solid to very good.

With Shanghai Dumpling being so consistent, they're a place to endlessly come and try everything until you find THE DISH(ES) that sing to you in any mood you're in. At least one will steal your heart and have you dreaming about it. This will require some playing around.

What to order? That's dependent on experience level and goals. Amount to order is gauged on # of people eating + style of eating (family-style sharing is best). I recommend ordering some combination of:

1. Safe bets like soup dumplings (y'all already know this), one order to be immediately consumed in the car haha, or anything you know you already love and always crave.
2. At least one ALL HOMEMADE dish noted on the menu.
3. At least one cold dish appetizer (SO UNDERRATED). For those unsure, I recommend starting with their cucumber with scallion, chicken in wine sauce ($8.50) or cold beef with special sauce ($8.95). Level up over time.
4. A gamble dish, something you think you'll likely enjoy (IE: Lovers of Filipino sinigang will likely enjoy their pickled cabbage with fish fillet soup). Gotta know your tastes and do some homework.
5. A wild card dish. Gotta keep things exciting. One doesn't always know what one likes.

Optionally, aim for an overall balanced meal. Hot + cold foods, steamed/boiled + sauteed/pan-fried foods, veggies + meats, sweet + savory. This can all be applied to other Chinese restaurants as well :) Just remember to consider what items must be immediately consumed in the car for peak quality. Follow this and you'll be guaranteed some level of satisfaction.

Noodle soups are packaged like how ramen joints do it: 2 tier leveled packaging with the soup at the base and noodles above it. Workers are nice and actually ask if you want utensils, a good practice!

NOTES: Cucumber with scallion oil ($5.95): Style is cut, not smashed. Hints of sesame oil are reminiscent of Korean banchan but with a lil' something extra. Refreshingly crunchy. A lil' sweet. This is a cold app I can see Koreans liking. Pork wontons in spicy sauce ($7.50): An all homemade item. For the spicy-adverse, the peanut butter sauce counteracts and balances the spice + their chili oil isn't really that spicy. Not the numbing fragrant ma-la type. Yummy! Lion's head noodle soup ($7.95): Version here is red-braised and the meatball is HUGE. Soft, bouncy, tender, succulent with a ginger juice flavor permeating all throughout. I can see people either loving or hating that ginger quality. It's great the first few bites but can tire quickly of the texture and get too rich halfway through the ball (Why I got as a noodle soup for textural contrast with the noodles and some crisp bokchoy). Unless you never tire of rich foods, better to order, split, and share just the ball alone as an appetizer. Fried bean curd with vermicelli soup ($4.95): A deceptively simple dish most will probably not care for yet I always crave and go back to! It's all about the synergy of the light but well-seasoned soup, the fried tofu absorbing said soup to bursting with a juicy combined flavor as it's bitten down, and the slippery-ness of the cellophane noodles as they're slurped. Inexplicable how satisfying it is and perfect...

Update: this owner must has some mental thing basing on their reply. So funny I am Chinese so I can’t be racist towards you too bad for you. Also when we came into the store, we can see the female staffs working in the kitchen. So yes we knew. Your place just went down the heel and nothing can stop it and you know it that’s why you so grumpy.

Used to go to this place when we lived in Princeton. It’s been 3 years since we moved to NYC and we came back here thinking to relive the great food. Yet we were very disappointed to find out that it is not longer the place as we remembered. It’s no longer authentic Shanghainese food but industrialized quality. Only ppl with no standards can tolerate such taste and quality. We know the owner is still the same one as we recognized her. The XLB, I would say even the trader joe microwave one has thinner skin than theirs. The ppl cooking in the kitchen clearly can’t handle such type of food. They do not come from this culture background and clearly were not trained and never had any practice for this. You should hire better cooks, if hard to find here, bring some from China who knows how to properly handle these food. Genuine advice. Then I saved my tofu pudding soup for watching a movie later, only to find out it was 100% terrible. Too much sugar, tofus texture not even better than the whole food’s silken tofu, and they put BOBA inside!!!! God helps me, any Chinese should know this is a big no. I ended up throwing it into the trash without finishing it, and I am the person who never throw away food as long as I feel they can still be taken home for some fixing. Overall, we won’t come back even if we go back to Edison again. I hope the owner can make more money by making all this changes since I know Surviving Covid is difficult. But I hope every good home-like restaurant will always remember their...

First, this is a take out business model that simply lets you sit and eat inside. You are greeted by ordering kiosks, just like Micky D's at a highway rest stop. (I'm sorry, but I don't know if all McD's use this system now as I haven't been in one in many years) All of the food is served in take out boxes/bowls on a metal tray (reminded me of high school lunch) except for the soup dumplings which were served in a steamer, on a metal tray. The soup dumplings were anything but soupy. I've never had soup dumplings that didn't have soup inside, just meat. Maybe this is because they don't provide a proper spoon. A small plastic disposable spoon was provided in a custom made advertising wrapper. If there was soup in the dumpling it would have run out of the spoon anyway, so I can only guess if there wasn't soup included because of the spoon or the spoon was so small because there wasn't soup anyway. We also had the spicy minced pork noodle soup. The soup was excellent. The noodles were too soft for my taste which detracted from the soup along with the paper bowl it came in. The beef scallion pancake wrap had a lot of possibilities. Unfortunately, it was prepared far in advance and was cold by the time it was served in a plastic box. The plastic box that it's served in makes what should be a crispy pancake very soggy and disappointing. For desert were ordered the peach ice cream. This too was a big disappointment. Apparently, the ice cream had melted at one point and the juice ran down into the bottom of the plastic holder and the refrozen ice cream was as hard as a rock. There are much better options nearby and I would suggest trying them. I don't like leaving bad reviews, but I'm hoping the owner reads this and makes some changes to the business model as I can tell this could be a great place if it were served more...