The dumpling rule

I can tell you whether a dumpling place is good before I have eaten anything, and I am going to give away the method because I have been insufferable about it for long enough.

The rule

Order the plainest thing on the menu. Pork and cabbage. Not the special, not the one with three ingredients in the name, not the one the internet told you about. The plain one.

A kitchen can hide behind chilli oil, behind a broth, behind a truffle situation that somebody talked them into. Nothing hides in pork and cabbage. You will know in one bite whether the wrapper is right, whether the filling was made today, and whether anyone in that kitchen is paying attention.

What you are checking for

• The wrapper at the pleat. Every dumpling has a thick seam. In a good one it is still tender. In a bad one it is a knot of raw dough and you have found the whole problem.

• Whether it holds together. The filling should come out as one piece, not as a loose scatter. That is a texture decision somebody made on purpose.

• The bottom, if it is fried. One connected crisp sheet, not a per-dumpling gamble.

• The vinegar on the table. If it is a black vinegar with actual sourness to it, someone in there cares. If it is the sweet stuff, adjust your expectations downward but not to zero.

A place that nails pork and cabbage will nail everything. A place that is only good at the fancy one is a place that bought the fancy one frozen.

The exception

Soup dumplings are a separate discipline and the rule does not apply. Judge those on the skin at the top pleat and on whether the soup is still hot at dumpling number six, which is a test of the kitchen's timing rather than its recipe.

Also: eighteen dumplings is a portion for one person. I will not be taking questions.