#35 Din Tai Fung
Posted on August 27, 2007
Filed Under Best of the Best, Chinese, Taiwanese | 2 Comments
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This week’s entry:
At last! This is the famous Din Tai Fung in Arcadia, home to the world famous Xiao Long Bao (XLB) which, to us Americans, are steamed pork dumplings. Din Tai Fung has made this ordinary Northern Chinese dish into something of a legend, with restaurants in Taiwan, Japan, and LA. Just how popular is this place? We got here at 10:30 in the morning and there was a line coming out the door waiting for the place to open. We had to wait a good half an hour for the first round of eaters to be done for a table for two.
They hand you a menu while you wait and you mark down what you’d like. The menu is not extensive, but it’s plenty to keep me coming back to try new stuff.
The crack team of chefs in the glass enclosed kitchen making and steaming up fresh dumplings.
The place is incredibly crowded.
First up is the house chicken noodle soup. They bring it to your table in two separate bowls and pour the soup into the bowl of noodles in front of you.
The soup itself is exquisite, it’s light but has depth and some great subtle flavors. The chicken is fantastic, they use a different breed of chicken than what we’d find in our local supermarkets. It’s definitely leaner, the meat still falls right off the bone and the texture is much more pleasant and light.
We got a steamer of crab and pork dumplings.
Plump and juicy. The key to great dumpling is the thickness of the skin, it should be very thin but not so thin that it breaks when you pick it up, hitting that perfect balance is tough, but Din Tai Fung does it admirably. The skin should not be too dry or mushy. Check out the definition of the folds on the dumpling.
Take a bite and the juices in the dumpling bursts into your mouth, it could be very hot, and the flavor is intense. The really interesting thing about the dumplings here is that the meat is not just a mush of ground pork, somehow it retains a more “scratchy” texture when it’s on your tongue. It’s very pleasing. We also got a steamer of the original pork dumplings.
A steamer of Rice and Pork Shiaomai. This was very filling and had a subtle flavor, let’s just say it benefitted greatly from some soy sauce. I’d try something else next time instead of ordering this.
For dessert we got two red bean buns. They’re so cute, perfectly round and neatly placed in their steamers, waiting to be plucked out.
The skin proved surprisingly strong and chewy, with a generous amount of red beans inside. This was excellent and I really relished taking this apart and eating it. The Red Bean Bun really made me happy and was a perfect end to a great meal.
Din Tai Fung definitely lived up to the hype. From the exquisite chicken noodles to the well executed crab and pork dumplings and the fantastic red bean bun. Every dish had something that placed it above the ordinary. The wait is a pain and is the worst part of the whole thing, but the service was prompt and I never felt hurried while eating, despite a long line outside. (Sorry guys.) Clear a saturday morning and give it a try if you haven’t.
A big thanks to Catherine for a real special treat.
Din Tai Fung
1108 S Baldwin Avenue
Arcadia, CA 91007
(626) 574-7068