XLB in Taipei: Din Tai Fung/ 鼎泰豐

Cuisine: Chinese/ Dim Sum
Location: No. 194, Sec. 2, Xin Yi Rd., Taipei, Taiwan
Price: $$
Food: *****
Service: ****
Overall: *****


Every time I have a friend soliciting food suggestions in Taipei, the very first place I point them to is always one and the same – Din Tai Fung, so they have a chance to experience the world famous Xiao Long Baos (XLBs).

Just how good is this place? The Hong Kong branch received a Michelin star in 2009, and the original Taipei store was named one of the ten best gourmet restaurants in the world by NY Times in 1993. All this, for making the most amazing XLBs known to mankind.

Glorious nuggets of perfection

What exactly are XLBs? Pork steamed buns, in a sense – except the skin is delicate and paper thin (to the point where one has to take extreme caution when picking them up from the bamboo steamers, lest they rupture the skin and cause all the golden pork broth to leak out). The broth, frozen into jellied cubes, becomes liquid when the bun steams, alongside the pork filling. The result is one of the most amazing bites of food you can ever experience – just make sure you don’t burn your tongue on them.

The BEST thing I ever ate...

The XLBs, while being Din Tai Fung’s claim to fame (and if I was ever on Food Network’s Best Thing I Ever Ate, would absolutely be my one food of choice – if I was filmed eating one I can’t even imagine the noises and facial expressions I would make in attempting to express my delight at eating this morsel of deliciousness), isn’t all this place offers, either. Their menu includes a wide assortment of dim sum, fried rice, noodle dishes, and more – every time I go I try to order something new to cover more of the menu, but my trips there are infrequent enough that simply satisfying my yearlong cravings for my favorite items there usually takes precendece.

For my last trip there with the family (a must every time I’m home in Taipei), we begin with the aforementioned XLBs, then move on to the “veggie” steamed dumplings¹.

That’s followed by the silk gourd and shrimp steamed buns, a lighter variant of the XLBs in both broth and filling;

Dan Dan noodles, a Chinese staple featuring chili oil, peanuts, and scallions, in its nutty, spicy glory²;

As brought to our table

All mixed up for delicious goodness!

“Veggie” wontons, which use the same filling as the steamed dumplings, only now bathed in a chili oil sauce³;

Dan Dan noodles and veggie wontons make a delicious, wholesome meal (or two of our 10 dishes...)

Stir-fried morning glory, my absolute favorite vegetable of all time⁴;

Fried rice with pork chops, each grain of rice infused with flavor, and a pork chop fried to perfection;

Shrimp Pot stickers, which aren’t doused in grease, instead lightly fried so they come out looking like a piece of art;

I have no idea how they get this rectangular layer of crispiness, but every single order comes out looking like this.

And the piece de resistance, truffled xiao long bao. 

Oh, my god.

Truffle specks lining the filling! No wonder it costs $3 per bao.

 You heard me. Din Tai Fung took the best dish they have to offer, and elevated it to a whole other level by adding truffles to it. And we’re not talking a drizzle of truffle oil – there are specks and chunks of truffle nestled within the pork filling, easily visible once the skin is broken apart. These are almost five times as expensive as the regular XLBs, selling for 90NT ($3) PER STEAMED BUN. Which sounds outrageous, but this is such a luxurious dish which has absolutely no peer in the world that it’s totally worth it. In fact, if you’ve been and not yet tried it, I’d say you’re missing out on the final tier of Din Tai Fung greatness. The earthiness of the truffle comingled with the pork and broth – oh, my god. No words can describe how glorious the process of eating one of these is, but here is my feeble attempt at doing so:

First, I nibble at the skin, creating a little pinhole. Then the broth is drank through the pinhole – and once it hits my palate, the sensory overload it creates bombards my pleasure centers. I imagine it’s like having ocean water engulf your toes as you stand in the wet sand, except instead of that, it’s pork broth engulfing my tongue and brain, and an internal monologue of me screaming with joy at the taste I’m experiencing.

After that, I bite the XLB open, so I can get the filling, skin, and broth all in one bite – three distinct texture, three distinct tastes, AND there’s the truffle doing its thing, not at all subtly, making this dish even more complex than it already is, despite it being no bigger than maybe a quarter of my fist. There’s some sort of poetic justice in here too, I think – something about the origin of the buns beginning with pig seeking out the elusive truffle, the truffle losing the battle, and the circular ending of the pig and the truffle ending up in the exact same bite. I’m sure that can be worded far more eloquently than my extremely literal take on that, but I’ll leave that wordsmithing to others out there.

Now half way done, I inspect the XLB, taking in the rich smell emanating, and grinning with idiotic glee as I spot the specks of truffles dotting the pork. This process takes maybe 5 seconds, because then, unable to contain myself, I pop the rest of the bun into my mouth, reigniting the process of pleasure and joy once again, before the ephemeral moment fades away and all I’m left is the memory of consuming this beautifully crafted work of art for the next year, until I return to Taipei once again.

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^{1. Not vegetarian – the filling is a veggie-pork blend, but since the veggies are highlighted (as evidenced by the lush green color), the bites translate as “veggie-meat steamed dumplings”, which seems like a bizarre way to describe the dish in English.↩}

^{2. When I eat spicy food, I’m of the belief that the best way to combat the growing heat in your mouth is to eat faster. Does that make sense? No. But I do it anyway.↩}

^{3. This sauce is so good that my mom likes to take home the leftover sauce and mix it with noodles. But if you eat all the wontons the servers proactively come and take the dish away to make space on the tables – so to counter this my mom came up with the genius idea of leaving one wonton in each bowl, then asking for it to go with all the sauce. She’s a genius, my mom.↩}

^{4. Nothing, not even Din Tai Fung’s, beats the stir-fried morning glory from Ah Hui, our home cook of over 30 years. This is a fact. ↩}