Should I begin with the confession that I had never, until the long-delayed, finally arrived opening of the New York mothership, been to Din Tai Fung? The Taiwanese chain has locations all over the world, including a number in California, the Pacific Northwest, and Vegas, and is renowned worldwide for its xiao long bao (XLB for short), the pog-size, 18-fold Shanghainese soup dumplings. Is this a disqualifying admission? I can plead only that the chain never touched New York; the XLB of my childhood came from Joe’s Shanghai, where lines formed then and now. But even Joe’s has never developed a cult like the one that currently consumes Din Tai Fung, where Bill Gates apparently sometimes stands on line. So hotly anticipated was the opening of the New York location that locals, angry at being made to wait, started giving it tetchy, one-star Yelp reviews before it even opened.
Now it has opened — to those who can get in. Unlike most of the other locations, this Din Tai Fung is reservation-only, and those reservations are predictably scarce, even for a restaurant that seats 450 dumpling lovers. I couldn’t get in; a wily, Los Angeles–raised colleague had, and when a last-minute conflict prevented her from using her spot, she offered it to me. I happily accepted, though I did ask my California Virgil if it was really worth all the fuss. “I mean, it’s great at the mall in Glendale,” she explained. But there, she cautioned, it serves a useful regional purpose: A trip to Din Tai Fung is a more accessible experience than a trip to the San Gabriel Valley, where the area’s best Asian restaurants are. “Instead of driving to God knows where on some Jonathan Gold list, you can be efficiently incorporated into this giant factory,” she said, “where you get the approximate version without having to spend two hours in the car from the west side.”
It was the 1 train that dumped me at our new Din Tai Fung, which occupies the subterranean grotto of Paramount Plaza once home to Mars 2112, the Y2K-era outer-space-themed restaurant. Devotees may remember being welcomed to the year 2112 by Martian Empress Glorianna with the traditional, made-up salutation: “Vabemu!” The empress has been replaced by a name-tagged DTF staffer, who politely and firmly forms the first of two bulwarks against the unreserved, but a descent into Din Tai Fung — at street level, the entrance of the restaurant is a glass cube, like the Apple Store on 59th Street — still has the tang of theme restaurant. As designed by the David Rockwell Group, Din Tai Fung suggests an Epcot version of Chinese dining, a labyrinth separated by screens and hanging lamps leading toward a dumpling laboratory in back, where white-coated cooks pleat away behind glass, like actors in a natural-history diorama.
The results are delicious. I can report that Din Tai Fung’s xiao long bao are very good, even at scale, with chewy wrappers and a well-seasoned pork mix that is finely chopped, not gummy or gooey. You can bathe one in a spoon filled with soy sauce and vinegar — DTF recommends a 1:3 mix — and free a little of the dumpling’s meaty soup before slurping it down. (The real purists take ’em straight.) The XLB come out hot, hot, hot in their bamboo steamers on a beeline from the kitchen.
I can’t say as much for the rest of the menu. An appetizer of sweet-and-sour ribs was more sweet than sour, and it arrived tepid. A stir-fry of black-pepper beef wasn’t appreciably different from what you’d get at P.F. Chang’s. Shrimp with Shanghai rice cakes were tasty enough, but not to justify weeks of waiting for a table. Service is friendly but still choppy: Drinks had to be chased down and inquired after; a side of rice came long after the mains it was meant to accompany had appeared.
The restaurant is in its first weeks; kinks remain. Din Tai Fung knows its strengths and plays to them: Besides the XLB, there are potstickers, wontons, shao mai, and steamed buns. Play to them yourself. Doesn’t an all-dumpling dinner sound nice? They can even stretch into dessert, like the puddingy chocolate XLB. Order it with a side of salted cream from the boba-tea menu, our waiter confided, and you’ll imagine you’re eating a s’more. Close your eyes, and you’ll swear you were in Glendale.
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