How to eat Din Tai Fung’s soup dumplings
Taiwanese dumpling and noodle chain Din Tai Fung, which operates more than 170 locations in 13 countries, opens its first Las Vegas location Monday at Aria. While there are more than 75 dishes on the menu, the chain’s signature items are unquestionably the xiao long bao, or soup dumplings. For the uninitiated, however, they can be a little tricky to eat.
The restaurant offers six varieties of the dumplings: three sweet, three savory. It’s the savory ones (kurobuta pork, crab and pork, and truffle and pork) that can be challenging, because of the piping-hot pork broth inside.
In normal times, the restaurant leaves printed instructions on every table explaining how to enjoy the dumplings without burning your mouth. New coronavirus-focused practices make that impractical. So, while the staff is still happy to walk guests through the process of preparing your dipping sauce, emptying the broth onto the spoon and enjoying the dumpling, chef James Fu has made a video to demonstrate the process.
Contact Al Mancini at amancini@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlManciniVegas on Twitter and Instagram.