As you may have already noticed from my writings, I hardly go for really expensive food. This may also mean that I miss out on some really nice food. This is more due to financial constraints more than anything else. So when someone asked me to join them in a free dinner with friends, I readily jumped at the opportunity. In this case, it was Din Tai Fung restaurant. Din Tai Fung originally came from Taiwan and has opened branches abroad including Singapore. So good was this place that it was once named as one of the worlds top ten restaurants.
Din Tai Fung serves primarily Chinese food. They specialize in their dumplings and apparently they have been quite good at it. They also have other stuff like noodles and rice meals but if will visit this place, their dumplings are a must. One top of the must try list is their famous xiao long bao 小笼包, this little bundle of flavour looks like your regular dumpling until you bite into it. The skin houses a tasty piece of meat where an explosion of flavour from the soup inside the xiao long bao completes the experience.
Biting into a xiao long bao is really an experience to be had, in fact, just getting the xiao long bao is already an art onto itself. I normally use chopsticks to grab the xiao long bao by the neck which incidentally has exactly 18 folds in its skin. Great care must be taken to grab the xiao long bao since it is quite delicate, grab it too aggresively and the skin might tear and the soup could start pouring out.
Eating is also an art as care must be taken not to eat the dumpling too fast or too early. The soup can be quite hot and it will surely burn your mouth if you eat it too soon. The dumpling is normally put on a chinese spoon and the diner takes a bite from the top of the dumpling sucking any soup with it. Normally black vinegar is used to further improve the experience together with a few shreds of ginger.
Although a few people will still swear by the original branch in Taiwan, the people at Din Tai Fung in Singapore already make a darn good xiao long bao. This would explain why they have a queue system in place to seat hungry diners. Any table that is already or about to finish is quickly cleaned up for the next customer. Service is quick and most of the staff speak English. The English menu should help non-Chinese speaking people immensely.
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“So when someone asked me to join them in a free dinner with friends, I readily jumped at the opportunity.” <— lol :p
yup, never ashamed to admit it. 😀