Ding Tai Fung (Taipei)

I love Ding Tai Fung. It's one of my favorite restaurants, period.

Pictured above is my favorite dumpling: the meat and vegetable dumpling. As you can see, it's mostly vegetable, which I love! It's not greasy at all. It's moist and flavorful on the inside and it's got that AWESOME skin on the outside . . . sooo good (can you tell that I love this restaurant???)

We ate at this restaurant three times during our four day stay in Taiwan since I love this restaurant so much. Perfectly kneaded skin; small, delicate xiao-long baos (soup dumplings) whose skins miraculously don't break even though they are filled with hot, juicy soup.

Heavenly eating experience. I would eat there every day if I could.

Prices are quite reasonable too. Dinner cost about $20 for three people - and we were really stuffed!

We went to several different locations. It's worth trying out the original one just because the ambiance seems more authentic. There is a newer one in the basement of Sogo, but it's just a bit more upscale, and thus you lose a little bit of the character.

In both places, you can watch the guys make the dumplings:

Even their other non-dumpling dishes are very good. We tried their hong-yo chao shou (hot oil wontons), Fried rice, Wonton soup, and Hot & Sour soup [yes, I know these sound like American style Chinese dishes, but honestly, we ordered them based on recommendations from our Taiwanese relatives!]. Although these other dishes were pretty good, I probably wouldn't order them again when I could just order more dumplings instead!

Be prepared to wait almost anytime you go. Our wait times varied between 10 minutes to 50 minutes depending on the time of day. I think it's virtually impossible to show up and not have to wait.

Bryan thought that he couldn't tell the difference between the one in Taipei and the one in California (Arcadia). I'm not sure I'm convinced of that, but I will say that the one in Taiwan is AWESOME!

Original restaurant:
194 Xin Yi Road, Section 2
Taipei 106 Taiwan