It’s been a while since I’ve been to Din Tai Fung, the Taiwanese chain with the famous soup dumplings. There are many locations these days in Sydney, and it’s a great option both for a quick meal or to sit down and take a bit more time…
…which is what Tim and I did last week in Central Park, on the food court level, where Din Tae Fung takes over a fairly substantial corner, and is well-lit and designed. As with the mother ship restaurant in World Square that I first discovered, I was delighted to see that the young waitresses had fabulously slightly unusual names.
We ordered lots. The Mango Shrimp Roll was new to me, perfectly crisp and savoury. I go for the fried pork chop and egg fried rice as a regular dish. They seem to have slightly changed the pork chop recipe: it doesn’t look as crumbed and crisp as in the photos on the menu but is still delicious and I find the rice is some magical creation that doesn’t take like fried rice elsewhere: it’s really light, really tasty and somehow elegant.
Had an order of the vegetable and pork jiao zi (just fine) and the deep fried lava balls was a taste sensation: I’ve had jian dui most of my life at dim sum restaurants, but these are smaller and more delicate and whatever that crazy yellow paste is inside, it’s delicious.
The highlight though was a new dish, these crazy jewel soup dumplings. Each wrapper has a different flavour. We weren’t paying that much attention… though some of the flavours may have been tomato, cheese, corn and seaweed. I love a gimmick, and these were delicious too.