Din Tai Feng 鼎泰豐, Taipei, Taiwan

Not a fan for this renowned shop but feel like paying for a visit somehow. The shop has 4 branches in Taipei city, but interestingly 10 shops in Japan, 4 in Beiing, 6 in Shanghai, 7 in Guang Zhou and Shen Zhen, 2 in HK, 7 in Singapore, 4 in Seoul, 4 in Indonesia, 1 in KL, 1 in Sydney, 1 in Arcadia of CA, but none in Thailand, none in Taichung, Hua Lien, Tainan, Kaohsuing....etc. To be honest, I often tell my local friends that I treat Din Tai Feng as 中華料理 (subtle Japanese Chinese cuisine). OK, this time I tried their branch at soi 216 of Chung Hsiao E. Rd. sec. 4. Anyone who knows about the famous Eastern QQ-dumpling dessert 東區粉圓 should know soi 216 of Chung Hsiao E. Rd. This branch is just at the soi entrance on the main road.

1. Seaweed tofu cold dish - the seaweed was soaked for a very long time it lost the original flavour of seaweed. I would believe the Chef hoped the smelly part of seaweed wouldn't make it too unpleasant as seaweed may not be nice to many people, especially they don't use much garlic to offset the smelly part. Personally I don't like it much as seaweed cold dish is a very symbolic Taiwanese dish and should have the flavour of seaweed. Maybe I am wrong but at least I have been to Taipei close to 100 times and tried so many local restaurants for this nice cold dish. 2. the sauce tray.

3. I would recommend visiting this shop at 3-4pm and treat it as a snack. If you come here or lunch/dinner, it would be too crowded and the kitchen may not make your order well. 4. the bill.

5. See if they have more time, they can be more attentive to your food. 6. hot and spicy soup - pretty good but again some ingredients like pork belly was prepared for a long time and lost the original flavour. So it just lost the blast of the hot and spicy with the pork belly flavour....etc.

7. pan fried pork chop - if you look for a tender pan fried pork chop with five spices, this is the one. If you want the Taiwanese style deep fried pork chop 酥排骨, it's not the one. 8. the famous dumpling. I would admit that they do make the wrap very very thin but not easily broken. It's of a very high technique and their wrap is indeed immaculate. As for the filling, it should be a bit more pork aromatic. This one is a bit too sweet and lost the pork original flavour. I would hope they should pay more attention to the filling too.

9/10. closer look to the dumpling. See how thin the wrap is!

11/12. I ordered a veggie/pork bun and it seemed like they only have one size of steaming basket. Made this bun a bit too occupying the basket. This is something good about the shop making the bun/dumpling fresh to the order. The shop is excellent at the bun and dumpling wrap, but again the filling inside is a bit not satisfactory to me. Check the below.

13. So if it's veggie/pork filling, both should be a bit more balanced or maybe on a 60% veggie against 40% pork or 70/30. However, this one is 98% veggie and 2% pork. If it's a veggie bun, then the veggie aroma should be strong enough, but this one lacked the original nice veggie aroma. 14. the Entrance.