One day in Beijing, not far from Tiananmen Square, I stumbled upon Wu Da Niang, a dumpling restaurant I later learned was part of a popular Chinese chain. I ordered a plate of boiled fish dumplings. A woman soon appeared at my table and filled a bowl with chili oil, soy sauce and vinegar, creating a spicy, tangy dipping sauce. One bite and I was hooked. It was the first of many occasions in China when I realized we in the U.S., with our countless Chinese restaurants, were missing out on some seriously great Chinese food. Tim and Nina Zagat argue just that in an op-ed piece piece in Saturday’s New York Times. The co-founders of Zagat guides decry the sorry state of Chinese cuisine in the U.S., noting that while Thai, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese restaurants have continued to improve, Chinese restaurants, which have a long, storied history in the U.S., have stagnated.

"For American diners,” they write, “the Chinese restaurant experience is the same tired routine—unimaginative dishes served amid dated, pseudo-imperial décor—that we’ve known for years.”

It’s not just a case of too much red vinyl and kung pao chicken, either. It’s what’s missing.

“Today, there are a number of regional cuisines known in China as the Eight Great Traditions (Anhui, Cantonese, Fujian, Hunan, Jiangsu, Shandong, Sichuan and Zhejiang cuisines),” they write. “Unless you’ve visited China, they most likely have never reached your lips.”

So what’s the problem? In part, ambitious restaurateurs are having trouble getting visas for skilled Chinese chefs, post-9/11, they write. They propose a solution to ease the visa problem: “If Henry Kissinger could practice ‘Ping-Pong diplomacy, perhaps Condoleezza Rice could try her hand at ‘dumpling diplomacy’?”

Sounds good to me.

As for the kind of dumplings I enjoyed, it turns out they are available in the U.S. after all. They’re just not too easy to find. After returning to Los Angeles, I found, thanks to food writer Jonathan Gold, the small, wonderfully named Dumpling Master in Monterey Park. There, the proprietors serve a variety of boiled and steamed dumplings, and they keep a ready supply of soy sauce, chili oil and vinegar on every table.

Wu Da Niang, meanwhile, has opened restaurants in Sydney and Jakarta, according to its Web site. I have no idea whether the chain has plans to conquer the U.S., but the company maintains a “franchise hotline” for anyone interested.

Related on World Hum:
* R.I.P. Momofuku Ando, Inventor of Japanese Ramen Noodles
* The New Hot Trend in Japanese Cuisine: 500-Year-Old Kaiseki
* Jon Stewart on the Zagat Prison Guide
* Eating Japanese: The World’s ‘My Boom’ Food

Photo of dumplings at Dumpling Master by jjsawrey via Flickr, (Creative Commons).