CB has teamed up with the creators of “Native Dish: United Flavors of NYC,” NYC Media’s new food TV series, to offer a behind-the-scenes look at some of the New Yorkers featured in these short videos. The series, which aims to celebrate New York City immigrants from all over the world, focuses on one individual and one dish at a time as a means through which to explore the myriad cuisines represented in the city and the people who make them. This month we are spotlighting Jamyang “Jimmy” Gurung, a Nepalese immigrant from the Himalayas, who manages the Himalayan Yak, a Nepalese/Tibetan restaurant, and Raksha Thapa, a waitress and former teacher from Kathmandu Valley. The Himalayan Yak team delve into their still-deep connection to Nepal and their love in sharing their cuisine and yak momos with New York.

When it comes to Chinese dumplings, fish is likely not the first filling that springs to mind. But that’s probably because you haven’t had the chance to try Liaoning province’s specialty: boiled mackerel dumplings. Dishes from Liaoning, which is located northeast of Beijing, fall under the regional umbrella of Dongbei (northeastern) cuisine. The staple grain up north is wheat and corn, with noodles, steamed breads and dumpling wrappers supplying most of the carbs in the local diet. The area wraps around the coastline of the Yellow Sea, bringing fresh seafood to the table, and its proximity to the Korean Peninsula means an abundance of pickled veggies.

The vast country of China has just one time zone, so Shanghai’s East Coast location means darkness comes early and most residents usually eat by nightfall, with restaurants often closing their kitchens around 9 p.m. But for those who keep late hours, there are a few late night supper spots around town. Aggressive government crackdowns on hawker stalls have driven many of the late night street vendors indoors, and our top five list goes beyond these roving vendors to feature a mix of restaurants that stay open late and small family-run gems that cater exclusively to the night-owl crowd.

The steam table is an often misunderstood – even maligned – concept. For those unfortunate souls who know only a lackluster corner deli, it's a repository of “food that’s been sitting around all day.” A restaurant inspector might insist on stricter criteria – something to the effect, perhaps, of maintaining already-cooked foods at safe holding temperatures by displaying them in pans above a bath of hot water. For us, particularly in the case of a praiseworthy steam table, it's "a picture menu in three dimensions.” A poetic definition, perhaps, but to us it rings true. Some displays of prepared food, we’ll agree, are not steam tables. They include the multitude of bins filled with ingredients waiting to be wedded in a Sichuan dry pot; the disposable trays, resting on wire racks above (tiny) flames, at a monthly Indonesian bazaar; or the bounty of pork and potatoes at any number of Ecuadorian street carts.

Shanghai’s dining scene still contains its share of neighborhood dumpling and noodle shops, but the overall trend is marching towards mall dining and chain stores in the ever-changing downtown, historic and suburban areas. A silver lining: At least a handful of our favorite street stalls have also taken the plunge into new digs, with the same dishes, but shiny (read: soulless) interiors. You win some, you lose a lot sometimes. Benjia Heading out to Gubei, Shanghai’s East Asian expat district, for Korean barbecue is one of our favorite meals any day of the week, but this year we brought a friend who took the meal to a whole new level.

Whether we’re heading to Sichuan province for a little culinary vacation or just looking for the best bowl of dan dan mian in the city, there’s one person we call for dining recommendations: Jenny Gao. Born in Chengdu and raised in Canada, Gao’s family still lives in Sichuan, and since moving to Shanghai in 2012, she visits them often. Over the past couple years, she’s turned her love for her hometown cuisine into a full-time job, becoming Shanghai’s unofficial Sichuan food ambassador. For years, Gao was the writer behind Jing Theory, a popular food blog about Shanghai’s best places to eat, drink and more.

We’d just about given up on hotpot, what with last year’s scandals of rat meat parading as lamb and opiates mingling with the Sichuan peppercorn to give diners a real buzz. But 2014 has seen the trend of farm-to-table dining hit Shanghai in a big way, spurred on by these food safety concerns. The most recent entrant to the organic dining scene is the aptly named Holy Cow. More than just a phrase made famous by Chicago Cubs announcer Harry Caray, Holy Cow is a healthy hotpot restaurant specializing in – you guessed it – beef, plus vegetables sourced from owner Anthony Zhao’s family farm. Loyal CB eaters might remember Zhao from his Shanghainese lunch hotspot Mi Xiang Yuan.

Baoyuan Jiaozi Wu was locally famous in Beijing for years, then U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew turned the sprawling dumpling house into a Chinese viral sensation when he lunched there in 2013. The modest meal came just weeks after Xi Jinping became the President of the People’s Republic and launched anti-corruption campaigns that tried to eliminate extravagant dinners replete with sea cucumbers and Moutai baijiu. The meal for three at Baoyuan came to just RMB 109 (US$16) – a jaw-droppingly low number for a lunch for officials in China. Netizens around the country hailed the secretary for his low-key, local choice.

[Editor's note: We're sorry to report that Harbin Dumplings has closed.] Walk along just about any street in Shanghai these days, and you’ll see an ever-encroaching range of Western brands, standardized brand signage and food franchises. As in other rapidly developing countries, the battle for consumer dollars and brand loyalty has meant more chains and mass-produced food. That’s partly what makes stepping into one of the several Liu Family Harbin Dumplings shops a breath of fresh air. Every morning until the lunch rush, the dining room and back rooms are set up with trays and workers dexterously making every dumpling from start to finish. Dumpling wrappers are meticulously hand-rolled, the fillings are mixed in large batches, and the time-consuming process of filling and closing the dumplings marches on until tray upon tray is ready for boiling.

When you’re in the capital of Sichuan province, snacking is a way of life. Noodles made of bracken, wheat, chickpeas, mung beans and more, as well as tofu puddings and dumplings, make up the city’s “small eats” (小吃, xiǎochī) scene, served from what’s colloquially known as “fly restaurants.” A step above street food, these family-owned eateries are so called because they attract diners like flies, despite what might seem like a less-than-hygienic atmosphere, because the food is too good to miss. Find a hole-in-the-wall that has more diners than stools, and order one of these local specialties for a delicious meal.

Bāozi (包子), or steamed buns, are a basic, on-the-go meal. It’s rare to come across a shop selling these buns for more than 1.5 RMB (US$0.25), and yet, the past five years have seen a dramatic rise in the stature of this humble dish – thanks mostly to celebrity chef David Chang, whose Momofuku pork bun has become world-famous. They even got a domestic boost in 2013, when President Xi Jinping visited a local 60-year-old baozi shop in Beijing. (Now, thanks to an hours-long queue to try the “President Special,” that chain is looking to go public.) Legend has it that baozi date back to the Three Kingdoms period (A.D. 220-280) and are credited to Zhuge Liang, a renowned military strategist who was also an eccentric foodie. He invented both this steamed bun and our favorite breakfast treat: the jianbing

Editor’s note: To cap off the year, we’re taking a look back at all the best eating experiences we had in 2015, and in Shanghai, that means everything from fried pork buns to shakshuka made with local ingredients. Yang Yang’s Dumplings The chengguan were out in full force shutting down our favorite street food hot spots this year, including one of Shanghai’s most popular night markets on Fangbang Lu and the soon-to-be-closed Tangjiawan market. We’re reminded that it’s ever more important to support those vendors who take pride in their craft and hand-make everything from start to finish.