Din Tai Fung 鼎泰丰 (Paragon)

You can't really go wrong with Din Tai Fung. The menu is very short, and for a reason: they only offer you food they can cook well. I've been here many times and the food and service has always been of above-average standard.

My 2 very old friends and I had dinner here on Monday evening, and we came at half-6 when there wasn't yet a queue. My friends claimed to want only a light meal, and both chose the chicken soup ($8.80; you can have it with noodles, in which case add $2) whereas I had the noodles with fried pork chop ($8.80). But being greedy, they also added twenty xiao long baos to our order ($9 for ten) and a plate of spinach sauteed with garlic ($6).

I liked my noodles: simple but well done, although I would have preferred my pork chop in a separate plate, not in the soup. Spinach done this way is on most Chinese restaurants' menus, but many can't get this simple dish right. Din Tai Fung does: not too oily, with the right cooking time and nice garlic taste.

When this restaurant first set up shop, xiao long bao was a relative rarity, and everyone raved about how wonderful the little dumplings were here. While DTF's version may have retained its fine quality, other places have since perfected theirs, hence it's no longer out of the ordinary, even though still commendable.

Staff here are kept extremely busy, but they are efficient and polite; we had no cause for complaint.

In short, come here or to their other outlets if you're in the vicinity and want a light (except if you're with gluttonous friends!) tasty meal that won't leave your wallet a lot emptier.

really made me feel like at taiwan whenever i drop by... all their food are my fave.. especilly theire fried rice and xiao long bao... nobody can match it..

always with friend to eat at least 3 portion of the bao and fried rice!

my favourite always at paragon..

DTF is one of those places you can hardly go wrong bringing your friends from overseas for a meal. The food quality is consistently good, service is prompt and it does not burn a hole in your pocket. The same goes for Crystal Jade Kitchen.

Well went by there again on Thurs. Being a kiasu, my dinner started at 5.30pm before the snaking queues start to form.

I ordered my usual fried rice with shrimp, fried pork cutlet for starters, chicken soup and the pork dumplings. Yesss.....thats just for one person, me...

The soup came first. I always wonder how a soup so clear can be so tasty. I thought I had a little scratchy throat and the soup just melted the sore throat away.

Then came the pork cutlet. I think they use some sort of 5 spice marinade, flash fry it, topped with some mild black pepper. Despite being like only 5mm thick, the pork sure is succulent and juicy. Every bite yields more of the flavour ... porky heaven.

And their signature pork dumpling, what is left to say. Order, eat, no regrets. Pork soup in a 18 fold dumpling...only the chinese can think of this sort of culinary treasures.

And the fried rice. I think it is the best fried rice around. The use of oil is done sparingly and can only be so with the right use of fire and water. The best fried rice is when water is used more than oil. Oh how the egg coats also very grain of rice and the crunchy shrimp that accompanies it.

Ok I'm done...aiyoh so full....

i fell in love with this place since i first went there when it first opened (i don't remember how many years ago that was!).. i used to love the xiao long bao at crystal jade, but after having a taste of ding tia fung's xiao long bao, i never turned back!!! it was less oily & the soup inside was tastier. the skin was also thinner & more resilient. must try the crab meat xiao long bao!

this is the only place where i would order fried rice. i'm not a fan of fried rice & would never order it outside as it is often either not tasty enough or too dry. however, ding tai fung's fried rice is very tasty & moist. it just seems fresher. the shrimp fried rice is my favourite. the shrimp is fresh & served generously.

i've been to 2 of the branches & there's usually a long queue during lunch & dinner hours. it's a pretty simple menu with tantalizing pictures of the dishes making it very easy to order. prices are a bit high for what it is... $10 noodles seem a bit pricey making it less of a value.

service is good, they do refill your tea often. food comes promptly after ordering. even if you have to wait, time passes faster when you can watch the chefs making the dim sum & noodles through the glass-walled kitchen.

I went Din Tai Fung at Paragon B1 with my colleague and her mom for dinner on 14 Nov’09. It’s their 1st time to try the restaurant food. It’s also one of my favourite restaurants so I’m very familiar with what’s yummy in the menu.

I ordered a “leng cai”- starter dish, deep fried prawn paste, “xia ren dou miao” – vegetable with prawns, “xiao long bao” – shanghai dumplings, prawns fried rice, pork rib fried rice, prawn dumpling soup and chilli crab bun (promotional item). At the end of the dinner, my colleague ordered red bean paste dumpling and yam buns as take away.

Leng cai and deep fried prawns paste are well liked by my colleague’s mom favourite.

Vegetable with prawns is juicy and yummy. My colleague finds the vegetable very fresh and tasty.

Xiao Long bao is one of my favourite dishes; the filling is soft and soupy. But it’s hot, so you need to be careful when you eat it.
Prawns fried rice and pork rib rice are strongly recommended by me to my colleague’s family. Both prefer the prawns then the pork rib even though the fried rice has no difference. But remember to avoid late dinner as sometime newly cooked rice may be used so the fried rice is sticky rather than “q q”.

Prawn dumpling soup (wan ton) is good. My colleague commented that the filling contain big and juicy prawns.

Chilli crab bun is a true disappointment as compared to an item sold a couple months back – chilli crab xiao long bao. It was recommended by the waitress. I find the bun’s skin too thick, the filling not soupy enough and very hard.

Their waiters/waitresses are polite, patience and helpful when I kept making requests during the dinner. Just that business is very good; they kept trying to clear empty plates on the table even when we are talking. I did raise my voice before on this matter since I don’t like waiters/waitresses trying to rush to clear table for next customer. I truly hope that they can improve their service.

Although I didn’t order a particular side dish – deep fried dumpling in this meal, I don’t recommend anyone to try it unless they don’t mind oiliness.

Definitely, I will recommend one to give this branch a try for its food.

My love affair with XLB starts way back; I fall in love with her at first sight, every petite piece so delicate and exquisite, she, who has the ability to make my heart skip a beat when I place her on my lips, she, who makes me go crazy and think of her everytime.

The two different XLB was made by two different pairs of hands; the one on the left was by me (note: the uneven folds) and the one on the right was by the master of course.

At Din Tai Fung’s media preview of their new mini steamed pork dumpling (xiao long tang bao), we were given a hands-on experience on making XLB. And that’s why I like dim sum so much; it’s easy to pop a piece inside our mouth, but to make each piece so delectable there’s much hard work and effort involved.

The requirement for a standard XLB is 18 folds, and it’s definitely not easy to do it, especially so when we only had half-an-hour of lesson beforehand, where the chefs actually train for a year to achieve the result. It’s only when you experience how difficult it is, to make a XLB before you actually appreciate the hard work put in by the good people slogging it out in the hot kitchen everyday.

The new mini steamed pork dumpling (XLB), or xiao long tang bao, whatever you call it, is 50% smaller than the regular XLB. Just imagine doing 18 folds on a normal size XLB, and now you do it on half the size of XLB; the xiao long tang baos are notoriously difficult to make!

I love to eat eggs; scrambled, poached, fried, sunny side up, steamed, over-easy, salted egg, quail egg, but with just the exception to century eggs. There’s no reason, but the black glossy appearance never appealed to me. Century eggs with fermented soya ($3.50)

As to the origin of drunken chicken, I do not know the story of it, but I do know that the Original Shanghainese drunken chicken ($6.80) had a strong alcohol taste infused in the smooth chicken meat.

Taking up a piece of the mini cucumber, crunch crunch; the inherited sweetness of the green plate had an addition spicy twist to it. Crunchy Mini Cucumber in Spicy Sauce ($3.80). Just for bites.

Much as I love my veggies, I was never a fan of vegetables in dim sum; somehow the steamed vegetables inside dumplings didn’t work for me. Neither did the Steamed vegetable & pork dumpling here.

This was a make-over of our regular siewmai, done the XLB-style. It was quintessentially an open-faced XLB with a shrimp sitting pretty on top. Shrimp & pork shao mai ($13.50 for 10)

I love to drink soup that is thick and tangy in flavour, with lots of ingredients that bear a close reminiscence to Shark’s fin soup. The Hot & sour soup ($6.80) was not bad, but the excessive pepper overwhelmed my taste buds.

Springy noodles that bounced off your tongue, that might sounds exaggerating, but I like my noodles done that way. The Noodle with minced pork in bean sauce ($7) was delightful with the generous toppings of bean sauce; it was a simple bowl of noodles, but I like it!

The Crispy golden prawn pancakes ($8.50) were nice as appetisers too, fried till golden brown, the crispy pancakes crusts were addictive to bite on.

I wasn’t too impressed with the Stir-fried nai bai with garlic. I’m not sure whether the chilli was supposed to be there as a decoration, or was it to enhanced the taste, but personally I felt that nai bai and chilli didn’t work. Plus the garlic wasn’t fried enough to infused the vegetables with the fragrance.

And now the star that we’ve been waiting for. Introducing, the Mini steamed pork dumpling with superior chicken broth ($10.80 for 10 pieces). As you all know, XLB itself has lots of soup stocks within the skin, but we were given a bowl of chicken broth to go along with the Mini Xiao Long Tang Baos (XLTB) this time round.

Filling the spoon with the chicken broth, we placed a piece of the mini XLB into it, add some ginger and vinegar and put everything into our mouth; the chicken broth was subtle, bordering on bland, and it was the stock within the XLB that gushed out that stole the show. Taste-wise there wasn’t much to differentiate the XLB and the XLTB , but it was a novelty and certainly less-filling to eat the mini.

* * *

It was indeed fun to have hands-on experience on making XLB, my appreciation to Clement & Andrew from ICON for the food tasting invitation, miss Patsy from Breadtalk, and the chefs who taught and made our XLB. The Xiao Long Tang Baos are available exclusively at Din Tai Fung Paragon from 1 June 2009, 3-5pm for weekdays, and 10am-12 noon for weekends.

You are always welcome to visit ladyironchef for a full-up on this trip. Whatever written herein are my genuine feelings expressed in words. Food, my dear, is what they call an adventure!

I have been to Din Tai Fund many times but this time we had the special baby xiao long boa which is only available in the afternoon during weekdays and between 10am to noon during weekends! If you haven't tried them, you HAVE to go! They are delicious! These little babies don't have the usual broth inside them. What you do is to dunk them into the superior broth that comes with them and have them like that. I don't know if it's the broth or the boas themselves, the combination works so well and they are even better than the usual xiao long boa! They are small so you can easily have 10 each!!

This place is always packed but the service is always very very good indeed.

I have always passed by this place and found it rather busy and chaotic. Never got to dine here until I was invited by a relative who managed to book a corner table by some inside connection with the restaurant. I understand that normally reservations are not entertained. I have seen (many times) long queues of hungry diners studying the menu outside the restaurant while waiting for their queue numbers to be called. Under normal situation, I think I will never come to this place.
Now that I have managed to get in at 7 pm (peak hour) without having to wait for a table, the service was prompt and courteous. Orders were taken efficiently (they have to considering the number of people waiting outside) but the food appeared in a disordered fashion (in my opinion).
There were 7 of us, and each ordered 1 noodle and we ordered some other dishes to share. The 7 bowls of noodles (same type of noodle with different ingredients and soup base) appeared 1 at a time. The side dishes also appeared in haphazard fashion.
Individual items were not expensive (mostly about $10) but the serving sizes were rather average. The noodles were good. They were springy in texture. The chicken soup base I had was good but not exceptionally so. It was not too salty.
The pork rib in soup was rather similar to the chicken soup.
The famous xiao long pow was good. We tried the ones with crab roe and the ones without. They have to be good considering how famous the place was. But I will not say that they are superior to some others that I have tried. The ones from Imperial Treasure would come to mind prompty as they were just as good if not better.
Other types of dumplings were ordered and the verdict was much the same.
Tried a couple of stir fried vegetables. 1 of them turned out to be rather salty.
The service was more than adequate with drinks topped up regularly. The food was generally decent and not too expensive. All these gave a decent dining experience. But if we were not given that special arrangement of a table, I would probably have gone elsewhere to dine instead of queueing for a table. Judging from what I experienced inside, I probably would not have missed the meal. On my own, if I ever come back to dine here, it has got to be during one of their off peak hours.

I wrote a review on the outlet @ wisma astria a few months back.

I noted that the xiao long bao was pathetic.

I also noted the irony that that was what Din Tai Fung was famous for.

My friends mentioned that I should'av tried the one @ paragon instead as it was much better there.

Looks like they were right. It was much better.

BUT

Even after the improvement, the xiao long bao was forgettable. Probably shows how pathetic the one was @ wisma atria.

The skin was still too thick at the top. The soup on the inside was tasteless. The meat was tough.

They're other dishes were good though. I especially liked their fried rice and appetisers.

I also liked the design of the place. very open with large outward-looking glass windows and water features that goes around the whole restaurent.

Their service was also very good. Fast, responsive and efficient. Good manners too.

But will I return? we'll see...

After reading so many good reviews here, I decided to bring my mother-in-law and auntie to DTF at Paragon for advance Mother's Day celebration last week.

Arrived there at 12.45pm and the queue was horrible but luckily we didn't need to wait that long, about 25 mins. They let us choose our dishes while waiting so our order was sent straight to the kitchen when we were directed to our table and we didn't wait long for the dishes to be served.

The food that we ordered (some were recommended by reviewers here) :-

1) Prawn With Egg Fried Rice ($10) - the fried rice is nice and not oily and the prawns are very fresh too but i think too costly for such a small plate.

2) Crab Meat Xiao Long Bao - this XLB is not bad but not that fantastic as described by some of the reviewers. I think those from Crystal Jade taste better.

3) Siew Mai With Shrimp On Top - the skin is very thick and the shrimp is over cooked, so hard. Not nice at all.

4) Prawn Noodle Soup - the soup is very blend, just with a bit of noodle and a few prawns and few shred of vegetable, not worth eating.

5) Zha Jiang Mian (plain) - it looks ok to me but I didn't try it so can't comment.

6) Fried Pork Chop - taste so-so only, nothing great.

7) Drunken Chicken (zui ji) - we ordered 2 portions for 5 of us and my daughter loves it so much that she ate almost one whole plate (but mind you, the serving is very small and miserable, just a few pieces of chicken only).

8) Appetizer - the one with shredded sichuan vegetable, taste wonderful.

The staffs are very polite and efficient and the service is very prompt too. However, i don't find the food as good as Crystal Jade and I don't understand why the long queue ? Moreover, the prices are not cheap, some are even more expensive than elsewhere.

There was a promotion this month and those who dine above $80 will be given a free cake. However, when we finished our meal and pay at the counter with vouchers, they claimed that the cake is not entitled for voucher payment so we have to return the cake and my girl was rather disappointed.

The overall experience with Din Tai Fung was disappointing and the food was overrated. I don't think I will ever eat there again.