Dumplings at Din Tai Fung

Whenever traveling people will tell you that whatever cuisine you are trying is the best in the world, but that only holds true for certain things.  The Philly cheesesteak of course is #1 in Philly, no other place in the world compares! You can have one that's good or a slight variation of an authentic Philly steak, but nothing compares truly than having one here in the 215.

But dumplings on the other hand is a quite different story. I've had great dumplings in various parts of the world but I might have just had the best dumplings in all my life recently in Taipei Taiwan at the legendary Din Tai Fung restaurant.  Founder Yang Bingy was born in Shanxi China but moved to Taiwan in 1948 as a result of the Chinese Civil War. Together with his wife Lai Penmei started a cooking oil retailer Din Tai Fung in 1958.  Around 1980, the cooking oil business became prevalent and business diminished drastically. In order to survive they turned over half of the shop to making and selling steamed buns (xiaolongbao).  The buns were so popular that the store stopped selling cooking oil all together and became a full fledged restaurant in 1980.

While at the restaurant we had various versions of the famous dumplings, some filled with soup, others with crab meat, shrimp, pork and other things. All of the ingredients are fresh and each dumpling is made perfect.  Even the service was so on point that it makes it hard to eat at restaurants with average customer service.  Eating here just opened up an entirely new craving for dumplings but it will definitely be hard to top what I experienced here at Din Tai Fung.