They’re the soup dumplings that saved the Big Apple’s summer.
Our sluggish, outdoors-focused dining scene needed a lift.
The end of last year saw major openings from Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Daniel Boulud and Andrew Carmellini, but recent months have been far less exciting — and the new fall crop looks thin.
Thankfully, there’s been one huge bright spot of late. Surprisingly, it’s a 425-seat chain restaurant from Taiwan, in a venue that was last home to outer space-themed tourist trap Mars 2112.
Like the Paris Olympics, Din Tai Fung (1633 Broadway, Midtown, DinTaiFungUSA.com) which opened a month ago, has brought some excitement to the waning weeks before Labor Day.
Its famous Xiao Long Bao helped ignite New York’s soup dumpling craze, which started fifteen or so years ago at Joe’s Shanghai in Chinatown, even though Din Tai Fung didn’t reach here until now.
They were worth the wait — and the hassle of getting in.
Din Tai Fung occupies 26,000 square feet of the underground level at Broadway and West 51st Street. An elevator whisks you from the street-level plaza down to a sprawling, many-sectioned, party-time floor designed by Rockwell Group. There are myriad nooks, crannies and bamboo screens, all supposedly inspired by a Chinese courtyard house and garden.
It’s the first New York outpost among 180 Din Tai Fung locations worldwide, including 16 in the US.
Such globe-girdling, Chinese-themed empires usually lay 1,000-year-old eggs in Manhattan — remember the swift flameouts of Da Dong and Hakkasan?
But, unlike those flops, Din Tai Fung isn’t going away for a long time.
The menu’s broken into categories such as appetizers, dumplings, noodles and wok dishes. But the soup dumplings ($18 to $19 for ten) — filled with pork, pork and crab or chicken — are the act to catch.
They’re assembled inside a glass-walled room by an army of cooks, clad in surgical masks and white t-shirts and aprons. They resemble lab technicians as they squeeze, pour and fold with military precision.
The soup dumplings are smaller and firmer than the standard New York articles, which often wobble on the spoon like jellyfish and squirt like geysers at first bite.
Din Tai Fung’s are as pleasingly tactile as al dente rigatoni, thanks to a minute-long,18-step hand-folding process that pleats the skin of each dumpling perfectly and achieves a so-called “golden ratio” with the savory fillings.
The ginger-tinted broth squirts sufficiently without drenching you. The fillings are silken on the tongue and explosive on the palate.
My favorites were the ones filled with Kurobata pork and crab meat soft enough for a baby to eat. Fiery, chili-based dipping sauce adds an extra dimension of pleasure.
I also loved chewy, sliced, pork over eggy white rice, and modestly-named “cucumber salad,” a cold and refreshing, garlic-chili-sesame affair that’s just the thing on a steamy day or night.
Too bad the web site reservations portal is near-useless. On Wednesday, for example, it showed no available booking options. A “check wait-time” box charmingly said the “place isn’t taking reservations right now — try again later.”
They take no walk-ins, though they would seem to have the space for them.
On both of my visits, I was appalled but not surprised that around 25% of seats were empty despite a supposed months-long waiting list.
Servers told me the deliberate under-booking is merely to “make sure the staff is up to speed.”
I suspect there might be other calculations at play.
Din Tai Fung is Taipei-based, but it knows the New York drill of foregoing short-term profit to generate long-term demand.
Either way, I look forward to returning to try their noodles, soups and black pepper tenderloin — if I can get a table.
