Jonathan Gold Discusses Din Tai Fung at The Americana

The new Din Tai Fung at The Americana mall lives up to the Arcadia locations' standards, and The Goldster sings words of praise, mostly fixated on the restaurant's famed pork soup dumplings:

XLBs were already popular here when Din Tai Fung opened in Arcadia a dozen years ago, but even the doubters had to admit that the restaurant raised the dumplings to another level.

And the xiao long bao are small miracles; plump, round spheres soft yet firm to the touch, delicately fragranced. When you pop one into your mouth, perhaps having wetted it first with a drop of black vinegar, it bursts into a mouthful of broth — boiling liquid if you haven't allowed it to cool — transforming the filling of meat and aromatics into a loose, savory purée that melts away like pork-scented air.

Pork soup dumplings, or xiao long bao, are the way to go. The pork-crab variation "tends to overcook and become a bit acrid," meanwhile the crab "are good, just never as good as you're hoping they'll be." A final winner is the truffle-enhanced dumplings which "can be pretty astonishing, exploding with black truffle intensity…" [LAT]

[Photo: Matthew Kang]

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Din Tai Fung

177 Caruso Avenue, Glendale, CA 91210