Din Tai Fung :: All Things Andy Gavin

Archive for Din Tai Fung

XLB – Soup Dumplings!

Jan31

Restaurant: Roc

Location: 2049 Sawtelle Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90025. (310) 235-2089

Date: January 24, 2014

Cuisine: Taiwanese Chinese

Rating: Awesome XLB

Among lovers of Chinese food the Xia Long Bao, or XLB for short, is a particular favorite. These little thin skinned dumplings stuffed with (usually) pork and a hot broth are quite delicious. So when a friend told me than one of the managers from Din Tai Fung (an SGV Taiwanese XLB palace) had opened a place on the Westside I waited all of about 24 hours before trying it.

Sleek space is nothing to write home about, but that’s not why we came.

Here is the menu. The top left corner in the red are all variants on the XLB.

Dumplings need their sauces. Here soy sauce, vinegar, chili oil, and ginger are available at all times.

Scallion pancake with ginger soy dipping sauce. Fried and tasty.

Beef roll. Cucumbers, green onions & cilantro. These monster burritos were filled with sweet BBQ beef and quite delicious.

Garlic dungeness crab fried rice. garlic, egg, & green onions. This was a fabulous fried rice. There were real chunks of sweet dungeness crab in here, making it a bit like certain rice dishes I would get in Japan.

Shrimp and pork spicy dumplings. I expected a more traditional wonton in chili oil (the Schezuan classic often called “numb taste wonton.”) These were more like potstickers with sirachi. Not my favorite dish of the day, although certainly fine.

Pan-fried dumplings, Shrimp and pork. These are the more fried, less spicy version of above. They were superior, pretty much classed fried potstickers.

Crispy balls. I can’t even remember what was inside.

Steamed bun. Same pork center, thicker coating.

Lobster & pork XLB. An interesting blend of the traditional savory pork with a bit of lobster sweetness.

Lobster, crab & fish XLB. Much more seafoody, with a sweet and briny taste.

Classic pork XLB. There is a reason these are classic. All the XLB were scrumptious, but these in particular are amazing.

You load one of these babies on a spoon and add some sauce (usually through a small hole). This helps cool down the boiling broth inside. Then pop in your mouth for an explosion of flavor. Don’t ever bite them, you’ll just make a mess — rookie mistake.

Pepper beef. Cubed filet mignon, red onions & bell peppers. The beef was tasty, but this is a pretty straight up, almost American Chinese style dish.

Pork chop. Great with the fried rice.

Shrimp and peppers. Light shrimp with shisito peppers.

Kale. Greens.

Chinese mustard greens sautéed with ginger. I think they mean steamed with ginger, because these were close to just steamed greens. They are what they are, but being a fat is flavor man, they didn’t do it for me.

Baby bok choy. Sauteed with garlic & shitake mushrooms. Better than the Chinese greens for sure, these had some actual flavor.

Overall, the XLB (all 3) and the fried rice made this meal. I want to try some of the other things on the menu, and next time I will, but my brother and I polished off all this just the two of us — that’s 15 dumplings each! I’d be perfectly happy to come in myself and order some rice and a steamer (or two) of XLB. Yum yum!

The menu is a little smaller than Din Tai Fung. The dumplings were just as good, but I miss a few of the other dishes at DTF: like the noodles, hot & sour, and chili wontons — but Roc is about 40 minutes closer, right in my hood, so I’ll be going a lot!

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or, for my index of Chinese Food, here.

By: agavin
Comments (1)

Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Chinese cuisine, Din Tai Fung, Fried rice, Roc, Sawtelle Boulevard, Xiao Long Bao, XLB

Din Tai Fung – The Return!

Jun18

By: agavin
Comments (2)

Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Chinese, Dim sum, dimsum, Din Tai Fung

Din Tai Fung Dumpling House

Dec21

Restaurant: Din Tai Fung

Location: 1108 S. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia,California 91007. (626)574-7068

Date: December 8, 2011 & February 28, 2012

Cuisine: Chinese Dumpling House

Rating: Amazing Taipei spinoff

I love dimsum so much I was willing to drive 45 minutes out into the wilds of Arcadia to try this place. And it was well worth the journey. The “juicy pork dumplings” alone were worth the price of admission.

Classical Arcadia was a place of legendary beauty, filled with bucolic green hills, lazy shepherds, and nubile nymphs. Arcadia Ca features strip malls.

The chefs hard at work in their little glass tank.

Din Tai Fung is so popular we had to wait 30 minutes on a random thursday at 1pm. But they are nothing if not organized. The staff all wear secret service ear pieces and our order was taken before we even sat.

The huge menu. And it has pictures!

Some stuff appears to be take out friendly.

The setup of chopsticks, tea cup, and ginger.

Marinated cucumber in a sort of garlic ponzu type sauce. Nice and crunchy, but I was saving room.

“Hot and Sour Soup (pork).” A well implemented version of the classic.

“Seaweed and Bean Curd in Vinegar dressing.” Interesting “salad”.

Chicken and veggie bits over noodles. Looks bland enough but it tasted great.

“Juicy pork dumplings.” These are sometimes called Shanghai style “soup” dumplings. I’ve had lots of them but these were easily the best ever. These succulent little mouthfuls were superbly balanced.

“Shrimp and Pork Wonton with Spicy Sauce.” This was absolutely delicious. The dumpling could have been almost anything as the sauce made it more about texture than flavor, but they would have been good plain too.

“Pork sticky rice .”

This sticky log of rice contained bonus roast pork. Yum yum. You’ll notice the DTF food is heavy on both the carbs AND the pork.

“Noodle with mince pork sauce.” This was yummy too, although I have had better of this dish — in Xian China.

“Noode with spicy sauce.” This was actually tastier than the pork ones as the sauce had this nice spicy vinegar tang.

“Braised beef soup.” You can’t see them, but the soup is filled with more of the spaghetti-like noodles. The beef tasted like short rib.

“Vegetarian dumplings.” These were some of the better veggie dumplings I’ve had. Still, they don’t hold a candle to the meaty ones.

“Shrimp Fried Noodle.”

“Pork and Shrimp Shu-mai.” Not only did these look great, but they tasted fantastic. These were my second favorite after the straight pork ones.

“Shanghai rice cake with chicken.” This tasted fine (like soy sauce, in a good way). The rice cake has a weird chewy texture, not unlike jellyfish. It was actually kind of fun.

“Pork buns.”

Unlike the typical BBQ pork buns, these just had the slightly spiced (buy yummy) pork balls inside, not the sweet red BBQ pork. Still good.

“Juicy Pork & Crab dumplings.” Like the pork ones, but with a slightly weird crab aftertaste. We all preferred the plain pork ones, but I still happily kicked back about 5 of these.

“Sautéed mustard cabbage with garlic.” Fine for what it was. Boring!

“Sauteed Bok Choy with Garlic.” You’d swear it was the same as the mustard greens, and you’d be wrong!

“Pork Chop Fried Rice.” Pretty much exactly what you’d expect.

Yum yum, drown that baby!

“Fish dumplings.” I haven’t had a lot of fish dumplings, but these were superb! Almost as good as the pork. Well not quite, but they were really good.

Now the dessert buns. First the “black sesame.”

This were really good, with a sweet nutty taste. The bun itself is identical to the pork bun.

Then two other experimental types: “sweet taro” and “red bean.” All were pleasant, but the taro was like a bun stuffed with whipped sweet mash potato and the red bean — well like red bean.

Some kind of specialty “sweet rice” with bits of fruit and red bean paste.

I actually enjoyed this dessert. It’s sickly sweet with a peculiar Chinese flavor and very sticky.

Overall, Din Tai Fun was awesome. I’m so hungry just writing up this post and I want to go back right away. I don’t want to drive the better part of an hour just this second, but I want the “juicy pork dumplings.” It’s also a good deal. Four of us completely polished off the above. And yeah we pigged out. And it cost like $65!

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