Dim Sum Garden

Philadelphia’s home to a number of superb contenders, but it’s hard to top one with a backstory like this Chinatown magnet has: the owners can trace their ancestry back to one of the chefs who invented the universal objects of foodie worship that are xiao long bao—and they’ve got the recipe to prove it. What’s more, says Sally Da, her mother-partner Shizhou has been cooking “the entire line of Shanghai-style dim sum” for more than 30 years. So it’s not just those intricate, elastic little dough pouches, bursting with soup at the touch of a tooth, that earned Dim Sum Garden such loyalty it moved to a bigger (but no less thronged) space in 2013; dumplings and cakes of all kinds—flat, fat, steamed, fried, savory, sweet—play substantial roles along with myriad variations on the snappy house noodles.