Din Tai Fung @ Bellevue

The anticipation for Din Tai Fung in the Seattle area was... off-the-charts. The only way to understand it is if you're Asian, and know how much Asian people like their food! The news of the opening of the restaurant spread by word-of-mouth like wildfire. You weren't quite Asian if you didn't have a countdown for DTF's opening day! Case in point: one of my friends tried several times to see if the restaurant was open yet, luckily she succeeded the 4th time!

DTF finally opened, quietly, last Saturday. By Sunday, the lines to get a table at the restaurant were 2 hours long. I visited on Wednesday afternoon. Arriving at 4pm, I still had to wait 30 minutes for a table during non-dinner hours. However, the wait was due to short staffing rather than too many customers. When my friends and I finally were seated, I looked around, and barely half the tables were filled. It took 20 minutes and me flagging down a waitress before we got waters and some attention. Quite strange, since there seemed to be plenty of servers and waiters and waitresses bustling around. The menu looked delicious- literally! Each dish had an accompanying picture, probably for the sake of the non-Chinese who might wonder at "juicy pork dumplings" or "vermicelli soup with fried tofu."

Not sure on the quantities, or how much the 3 of us girls could eat, we aimed conservatively first. Soon after we ordered, 2.... trays (for the lack of a better word) of xiao long baos arrived. Each were bite-sized, and filled with warm (not hot) meat juices. We carefully peeled the little dumplings off the plate, gingerly to avoid break the thin outer layer and risk spilling the precious soup. The pork dumplings were as anticipated, absolutely delicious! Each order came with 10 dumplings, and I was pretty sure I had more than 10 that evening! The shrimp and pork wontons were amazing, definitely vying with the soup dumplings for a place in my heart! The tiny bit of spiciness in the sauce was perfect. The outer skin was chewy with... bounciness. Next came the hot and sour soup and pork chop. I was not too impressed with the soup, despite my friend raving about it. I thought it was decent, a little too sour and not enough spiciness. And this is coming from me, an absolute wimp about spiciness! (I order "mild" or 1-2 stars at Thai restaurants, for reference.) I would probably pass on the soup next time. The pork chop order was one battered piece of pork, fried golden. I only had a taste of it (my mouth was too busy stuffed with XLB), and it was good. "Good" meaning: "I think I can do better than that!" My mom's pork chop is definitely just as good, if not better than DTF's. By the time our 4th person arrived, the 3 of us girls had polished off 2 trays of XLB, a medium order of hot and sour soup, a pork chop, and an order of wontons (9 pieces). We were more than game to order again. More XLB soon arrived, as well as shumai. The pork and shrimp shumai was decent, but I preferred the XLB. We also indulged in dessert. We were told the restaurant was out of red bean, which made up almost the entire dessert menu, so we opted for taro dumplings. At first, I wasn't too sure about the dessert menu at a Chinese restaurant, but DTF surprised me. Each dumpling was filled with sweet taro filling, and the outer skin was thin and chewy. I loved it! I would definitely order it again next time!

However, for all of the awesomeness of DTF, I also had some complaints. The slowness of getting seats (during off-hours) and slowness of the staff were detractions, especially since I was already salivating at the thought of XLB in class 3 hours ago! Also, the restaurant seemed to be "out" of every other thing on the menu! We were told at least 3 items we had planned to order was not available. For a restaurant with a pretty small menu list, this definitely limits the options. Lastly, prepare to open your wallet if you go to DTF! The damage for the 4 of us was collectively $100+. Plus tip and tax, I easily spent over $30 for the meal. I was pretty full when we left, but probably could have had a couple more XLB, especially since they're so tiny! DTF is well-worth it for special occasions, but I probably can't go as much as I would like to! I can't wait to take my brother there!

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Juicy Pork Dumplings aka Xiao Long Bao

Wontons

Hot and Sour Soup

Shrimp and Pork Shumai

Taro Dumplings