Din Tai Fung
5 Henrietta St, Covent Garden,
London WC2E 8PT
Nearest Tube: Covent Garden
Buzz Factor 4.2/5 stars
Food 4/5 stars
Value for money 3.5/5 stars
3.9 Yummy Stars
Price Dumplings - from £2.5 each (or less if bigger order (at time of writing)
☏ · 020 3034 3888
Xiaolongbao at Din Tai Fung, Covent Garden, London
My obsession with steamed Shanghainese dumplings, “Xiaolongbao”, began many moons ago, having devoured them growing up in Hong Kong. Wherever I go, be it Hong Kong or London, I hunt for the best XLB. Is it because they remind me of my childhood? Nostalgia aside, is there something earnestly comforting about them?
Din Tai Fung started as a shop in Taiwan, selling cooking oil. In 1972, the founder and his wife decided to sell XLB as well. Some 47 years later, it now has around 150 restaurants worldwide, having won accolades and a celebrity following. It opened its first one in London in December 2018.
On our family visit to Taipei, Taiwan, the birthplace of Din Tai Fung, my father, the wise one, suggested going in the middle of the afternoon. No queue at all and we merrily walked in. Right by the entrance, there sat a glass box, housing a small army of chefs, cloaked in whites - coats, masks and caps, looking like surgeons performing operations.
The chefs, having been trained for 6 months, were toiling in hushed, solemn harmony. One chef would miraculously transform the dough into strands, with flour wafting in the air, and tear the strands into pieces (weighing 5 g each). The next chef would roll them into thin round discs, followed by yet another chef dolloping exactly 16 g of filling, weighing each one. Chefs were knitting the wrapper into exactly 18 pleats at the blink of an eye. Surely, they don’t count the number of pleats or do they? Their focus was intense. Their skill and the astonishing speed at which they executed each step in the production line was beyond human. If they get an itch, do they just zone it out?
The manager revealed that they made 8,000-10,000 XLB a day midweek and a staggering 12,000 over the weekend. 12,000 XLB would have demanded a herculean feat of 216,000 pleats. That’s a lot of counting.
It was only when I made some XLB on my return to London that I appreciated the chefs’ skill even more. The dough must be rolled into discs of just the right thickness, so that when you lift each delicate dumpling from the basket, you do not pierce the wrapper, leaking out the precious soup.
On the first full day of the launch of the godfather of XLB, Din Tai Fung in London, we arrived before it opened and were second in the queue. No 3-hour queues like the evening before. What would you do in the 3 hours? Dispatch a “Send to All” message (like in Michael McIntyre’s Big Show) and see what happens? I went again in March 2019 and the XLB at Din Tai Fung mania had calmed down. We waltzed in (round 12 pm).
On our most recent visit, the earlier teething issues (eg no truffle XLB) seemed to have been resolved. DTF’s formula of the glass box, showing off its chefs in frenetic activity in their operating theatre, is on display with Instagram-worthy dumpling-making in full steam. Many content-looking Asian customers were snapping photos of the XLB on their phones.
The décor of the restaurant is a posher version of its restaurants outside the UK, with its utilitarian tables and chairs. Service here is functional. Multiple-choice menus were handed out to tick off your selection. This is a casual eaterie with corresponding level of service and no cheffy salad leaf tweezering in sight.
When the XLB arrived, the dim sum basket was unveiled in front of you with a gush of steam hurtling upwards, creating a cloud of mystery, revealing glorious jewels of pleasure underneath. My heart skipped a beat with the anticipation of the liquid joy seeping out as I bit into the thinly-wrapped dumpling. The soup had an intense flavour, probably as a result of hours of cooking and double-boiling. The XLB was so dainty and delicate.
I tackle these little beauties by clamping the chopsticks on its crown of flowing twirls and gently ease the wobbly dumpling from its comfortable bed onto a deep Chinese spoon. I then carefully nibble the top of the dumpling and suck out the soul-satisfying, spine-warming broth before consuming the juicy dumpling (with a drizzle of vinegar and slivers of ginger if you like). If you don’t want to chance burning your tongue, tear the wrapper on the spoon instead and let the shimmering soup slide onto the spoon.
The XLB with different fillings of pork, crab, chilli crab and truffle were equally beguiling. The prawn and pork Shao Mai dumplings were disappointing though. They were steamed for a tad too long, making the filling tough and rubbery.
It is not just the XLB that is worthy of your pennies. Din Tai Fung’s chicken soup was not photogenic but the flavour was deep and sensationally gratifying, just like the one that we had in Taiwan. It had such a soothing effect, making you feel like someone special putting their arm round you. The chicken bathing in the soup was as soft as a pillowy bun. The noodles (be they Dan Dan noodles or noodles with pork in spicy bean sauce) were squidgy and light. Gosh, did they taste fresh. Din Tai Fung apparently has a chef, specialising in just fried rice, who oversees this technical dish. The Prawn and egg fried rice had a real “wok hei”, flirting a subtle smoky flavour.
So, is Din Tai Fung’s XLB the best in town? My father, being a food enthusiast (or, in less polite terms, a fussy eater), described those in Taiwan as “acceptable” (translated to mean, good). The ones in London are certainly worthy, but I wouldn’t say the best. DTL set the XLB trend on fire, but appear to have been overtaken by other serious players. Their XLB are too tiny to encase a satisfying amount of soup. If Mr DTF is reading this, I implore you to make them a bit bigger so that your darling customers’ delectation lasts that little longer. I have seen even thinner wrappers, so insanely translucent that you can see the filling and the soup. Can you imagine?
The XLB at DTF in London are not cheap. You would weep if you heard that at their Taipei branch, they were going for the equivalent of about 55 pence per XLB in 2018 (and about £1 each in Hong Kong), compared with minimum £2.50 (for per chilli crab and pork XLB if you order them individually or £6.80 for 4 pork ones) here. With soaring rent, business rates and labour costs in London, it is no surprise that XLB would be more here. Still, I didn’t expect them to be this expensive.
Would I go again? Most definitely. It is only at Din Tai Fung that you can choose from a wide variety of XLB, be they pork, chicken, (chilli) crab, vegetarian or truffle ones. I would quite happily plonk my face into many other dishes too.
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