Near the top of my ever-growing list of beloved fried foods is crab rangoon. I was first introduced to crab rangoon fifteen years ago at Royal Peking in Lawrence, Kansas. Served five to an order, this delicate appetizer quickly became one of my favorites. To make crab rangoon, a wonton is filled with a mixture of cream cheese, crabmeat, scallions and seasonings, formed into a sachet, and deep fried until the outside is crispy, golden, and pocked with hardened grease bubbles. The dumpling is best dipped in a sweet and sour sauce.

Never heard of cream cheese used in Chinese cooking? That’s because crab rangoon is not Chinese at all. Like the fortune cookie, this decidedly inauthentic dish was probably introduced into American cuisine by the restaurant chain Trader Vic’s. Popular in cities worldwide from the 1950’s on, Trader Vic’s successfully created a unique and forward-thinking fusion of cuisines, as well as tropical drinks, in a relaxed Polynesian atmosphere. While there are few remaining Trader Vic’s outposts in the U.S., they’ve left behind an enormous culinary legacy including crab rangoon and rum drinks served in coconuts. Their salty fried dishes subtly encouraged customers to keep those deliciously sweet boozy potions coming.

It had been years since I had seen crab rangoon on a restaurant menu, but I’ve come across it more and more lately. These days crab rangoon (also listed as “cheese wontons”) are delivered hot to my door in groups of ten in a waxy bag or a styrofoam box. Sadly, somewhere between Lawrence and Brooklyn, the crabmeat disappeared, replaced with a sickly-sweetened cream cheese and flecked with unidentified orange bits, which serve as tease and homage to the crab that is no longer. The triangular cheese wontons from my local Wing Hua are not salty enough, nor are they fried at a high enough temperature to achieve the properly crunchy texture. The accompanying red-orange sauce tastes like children’s cough medicine. Interestingly, this dipping sauce does harken back to the rock candy syrup used in the original Trader Vic’s mai tai, sure to leave you feeling ill after one or two. Even more curiously, I continue to order Wing Hua’s “crab rangoon” as it seems to be my best local option.

Recently I’ve seen some more hopeful evidence of the reemergence of crab rangoon. On a trip to Providence, I tasted an excellent version of the “real” crab rangoon in a restaurant called Mumu. On the flip side, I had a god-awful crab rangoon last week in Boston’s South Station that was underfried and had large chunks of parcooked white onion ruining the filling. Closer to home, three of my local Chinese restaurants offer the “cheese wonton,” the best being Wing Hua. I haven’t yet given up on finding a better crab rangoon locally, but if you serve them with a scorpion bowl or a few pitchers of mai tais, they’re just fine.

Wing Hua
508 Court Street
and
223 Church Avenue

Originally published on Until Monday: Brooklyn