Love Those Dumplings

Foo(d) Bar Blog => Din Tai Fung

There’s a funny thing about doing food and restaurant reviews. Even though I know fully well that each person has their own taste and that you can’t hope to agree with anyone except perhaps yourself, there’s a certain weird self-affirmation when you run across someone who records a similar impression of a restaurant – particularly one you consider exceptional.

In this case I came across this new review over at the Foo(d) Bar Blog, which I believe is also based in the Phoenix area, but in this case is reviewing Din Tai Fung, a restaurant in my wife’s old neighborhood: Taipei, Taiwan. (What are the odds?)

Referring to their world-famous xiao long bao:

What makes Xiaolongbao different from other types of steamed buns and dumplings is the filling. In addition to meat, the dumplings are also stuffed with gelatenous stock before being steamed. Once steamed, the gelatin melts and becomes the soup inside the bun. When you eat a xiaolongbao, you get a nice combination of meat, soup, and wrapper. The soup buns at Din Tai Fung were awesome. The soup was very hot, and it was easy to scald yourself if you didn’t let them cool just a bit before eating. Wait too long, though, and the soup wasn’t quite as good. What also makes the xiaolongbao unique at Din Tai Fung is the number of pleats in each dumpling. Apparently, the buns at Din Tai Fung have more pleats than most other places, which is a result of years of experimentation by the owner.

Read the rest of his review via this link.

If you’re ever in Taipei, you can hardly go wrong at Din Tai Fung. (They also have branches in Japan, Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Korea, Indonesia and here in the States in the Los Angeles area.)

Technorati Tags: Blog, Restaurant, Review, Taiwan, 中文