Din Tai Fung with the Germans

DinTaiFung really does, as I've mentioned before, have excellent dumplings. I've been looking for an excuse to go back and thankfully Ben and Sonja visiting from Deutschland gives me that excuse.
Two beers of the day this time, Taiwan Green Beer and Yanjing.
We try a selection of dumplings including the regular specials and vegie dumplings. All are very very good.

Din Tai Fung

Apparently Din Tai Fung serves the "world's tastiest dumpling". That has to be true. It is written on the menu. If truth be told though, they are pretty bloody tasty. DinTaiFung is a Taiwan based chain of restaurants that have been taking the world by storm. This one here in Sydney opened in 2008 and is proving to be very popular.

We hadn't planned on coming to DinTaiFung. We had come into the city for hair cuts and I thought I was going to miss beer O'clock as well. I usually give myself a buzz cut, no. 4, and then get Michelle to clean up the bits I missed afterwards. But Michelle was going into town for a haircut so I thought I would tag along and get one myself. Beats doing it myself... and the head massage... But I digress. Back to beer O'clock, this is a Taiwan Green Beer. The label is green not the beer and it wasn't too bad.

Below we have Xiao Long Bao and other goodies. Xiao Long Bao (pork dumplings) is the house speciality and could well be the best dumplings I've ever had. You get 6 or 8 in a serve. There are even instructions on how to eat them. First you dump them in a ginger, soy and vinegar mixture and then place it on a spoon. You then pierce the dumpling with with your chopstick and the soup contained in these delicate little morsels drains onto your spoon. You pick up the dumpling and eat it and then drink the soup from the spoon. We also had another serve of similar looking dumplings that contained crab, shrimp and roe. The dumpling with soup inside reminded us of a croquet filled with foie gras soup we had at Calendrier in Osaka.



Drunken Chicken.

Shrimp and pork shao-mai.

Silken tofu with pork-floss and century eggs. Floss made from pork. Could there be anything more decadent?

Sauteed water cress.

Mango pudding.

Above is the kitchen where the each dumpling is hand crafted. The pace is is not as frenetic as you would expect with the numbers of dumplings turned out. Each dumpling is a work of art.

DinTaiFung is in the World Square Shopping Centre at 644 George Street Sydney.

Note: I forgot my trusty Lumix Lx3 this evening and had to go back to snapping with the ol' mobile so the pix won't be as "sharp" as usual.

Market City for lunch

Lunch in the food hall at Market City - just upstairs from Paddy's Market.