1/23/2024 0 Comments Din tai fung dim sum![]() Or you may feel as if you’re in the dining room of a last-minute two-star Costa Brava hotel that you booked half-board but by day three are loth to eat in. You will either revel in its sparse, non-luxurious simplicity, the cheap tables, the Ikea glasses and the hollow acoustics. What’s less easy to decipher is why Din Tai Fung is “cool right now”, which would require a spider-chart with quantitative variables on youth trends, shifting demographics, plus some lemming-attracting pixie dust.ĭin Tai Fung’s pork xiao long bao: ‘Pleasantly inoffensive.’ Photograph: Karen Robinson/The Guardianĭin Tai Fung’s decor will divide diners. The company has made moves on London in a swaggering – albeit politely swaggering – manner by commandeering two enormo-restaurants in the eye-wateringly expensive real-estate zones of Henrietta Street and, soon, Oxford Street’s Centre Point. Din Tai Fung is a global chain that specialises in Taiwanese dumplings and Huaiyang cuisine. Clearly they help, but real, giddy hype will always be something of a perfect storm. Hype of the level surrounding Din Tai Fung, I must stress, is not created simply by paid public relations teams. In December, on a busy, pre-Christmas tourist thoroughfare, bring a cagoule and stay hydrated, because the queue for its xiao long bao and salted egg custard lava buns will feel like the sort of war of attrition from which Stephen King could milk 500 pages. At the all-new, 250-seater Din Tai Fung in London’s Covent Garden, those shadowy voices of hype said we should expect an opening-week queue of five hours. I wish I could reveal something more wholesome, but hype will put more bums on seats and napkins in laps than a new opening’s deft seasoning or fancy produce suppliers. In summary, Din Tai Fung is definitely worth the trip to Bellevue.Hype is a vital pivot of the restaurant scene. Not as cheap as our old favorite the long-closed Top Gun in the International District, but still fairly inexpensive. Tea was our only beverage but our per person cost, including tip, was just $22. The five of us ate until we were stuffed and we had a few leftovers. Our order of black sesame dumplings were sweet, a little crunchy and rich. And, thanks to Hatsuko who was with us on Saturday, I’ve found something new! Sweets normally don’t make it on my list, partly because I manage to get stuffed on the savory items but also, I don’t care for most Chinese “dessert” items. I was especially impressed with the delicacy of the dumpling wrappers. I could go back and do it all again today. Actually we had quite a bit of everything on the menu. We had a little bit of everything on the menu. The slightly spicy dumpling she recommended was one of the tables’ favorites. One hint, we asked our server to review our list of selections to see if we’d missed anything she thought was particularly good. Then dishes arrive in random dim sum-style and are checked off the list, so there’s constant activity of new plates being delivered while finished items are cleared away. Your server will retrieve the form, place the order and return with a printed list of your order. After reviewing the options you make your selections on the order form. When you’re seated you’re presented with menus (photos and descriptions of every menu item) and an order list. Ordering is basically a reverse dim sum process. It’s a fascinating production process.Īlthough this is not technically a dim sum house – servers with carts do not circle the room hawking steamer baskets of intriguing foods – the menu is very dim sum like, as you might expect. A couple of people are cutting and weighing the dumpling dough, while (many!) others roll them out and fill them. If you do have to wait, watch the cooks in the dumpling-making station through windows surrounding their area. And that is saying something as the place is huge! There were only half a dozen other groups already in line so we had no trouble being seated immediately but soon after the entire restaurant was filled. ![]() We’d heard wait lines for a table were often long so we arrived right at the 10:00 a.m. ![]() ![]() On Saturday morning five of us finally had a succesful outing to this super popular dumpling house located in Bellevue. For one reason or another my first three attempts to check out Din Tai Fung fell through. ![]()
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