Most Friday nights when I was in years 10 and 11 at school, my group of four or five “besties”, along with some guys from the boys school a few suburbs away, used to have dinner at the local Chinese restaurant in North Sydney. I don’t remember what we ate (honey prawns and beef in black bean sauce maybe) but I do remember that we would order a couple of carafes of the house white and have ourselves a merry time. Even though we were just 16 or, at most, 17 they never once asked for ID, which was probably part of the restaurant’s appeal.
Afterwards, being the sophisticated diners we were, we would wander up the hill to McDonalds and order hot fudge sundaes. We’d sit on the picnic tables outside for hours, talking rubbish, laughing too loudly and generally acting like the groups of young people I see these days and can’t help thinking “don’t they have anything better to do?” about. The answer then (as it still is now, I'm sure) was no - we were having a grand time.
Eventually the Friday night dinners stopped, for reasons I can’t remember (I’d like to say we were studying but I don’t think any of us were that conscientious), and I pretty much stopped eating Chinese food on any kind of regular basis. It’s not that I don’t like Chinese - I do, when it's done well - but when I’m eating out it always seems like a safe, even boring, choice. If I’m in the mood for Asian, I’ll usually plump for the Thai, Vietnamese or Japanese option if there is one, and let’s face it, there’s always a Thai option.
Oh my goodness, what a revelation lunch at Din Tai Fung, http://www.dintaifung.com.tw/, in World Square was! I’ve been hearing about the Sydney branch of this world famous dumpling chain since it opened last year but was in no particular hurry to battle the queues of people (waits of up to an hour are apparently common) to see what all the fuss was about. Having finally made it there with a friend on Saturday I now know what all the fuss is about: Din Tai Fung’s soup dumplings. Celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain apparently once said the one dish he would travel half way around the world to eat again was “the soup dumpling at Din Tai Fung” and I can understand why.
Arriving in a traditional bamboo steamer basket, these deceptively delicate looking dumplings (the skins are almost translucent) bulge with a rich juicy broth that bursts in your mouth as you eat them. The idea, as an illustrated card on the table helpfully explains, is to dip the dumpling in a mix of soy and vinegar, place it on a spoon to catch the broth and then make a small hole in the skin of the dumpling with the chopstick. Once the steam has escaped you slurp the whole mouthful down with a few shreds of fresh ginger. We tried the restaurant’s signature xia long bao or pork soup dumplings and a crabmeat with crab roe and pork variety, and both were superb – juicy, intensely flavoursome, surprisingly filling and utterly moreish...
Again this was one of those occasions where I wished we’d had more people with us so we could try more of the dishes on the menu. The Shanghainese drunken chicken and water spinach with garlic we ordered were both super-tasty and satisfying companions to the dumplings, but sharing a table with two other couples meant we were tantalisingly close to an array of other dishes that looked as good, if not better. If the few dishes we did try are anything to go on however, there’s nothing safe or boring about this style of Chinese food. I am a convert.
Hmmm, might be time to get on the phone and organise another Friday night dinner (minus the hot fudge sundae)…
Afterwards, being the sophisticated diners we were, we would wander up the hill to McDonalds and order hot fudge sundaes. We’d sit on the picnic tables outside for hours, talking rubbish, laughing too loudly and generally acting like the groups of young people I see these days and can’t help thinking “don’t they have anything better to do?” about. The answer then (as it still is now, I'm sure) was no - we were having a grand time.
Eventually the Friday night dinners stopped, for reasons I can’t remember (I’d like to say we were studying but I don’t think any of us were that conscientious), and I pretty much stopped eating Chinese food on any kind of regular basis. It’s not that I don’t like Chinese - I do, when it's done well - but when I’m eating out it always seems like a safe, even boring, choice. If I’m in the mood for Asian, I’ll usually plump for the Thai, Vietnamese or Japanese option if there is one, and let’s face it, there’s always a Thai option.
Oh my goodness, what a revelation lunch at Din Tai Fung, http://www.dintaifung.com.tw/, in World Square was! I’ve been hearing about the Sydney branch of this world famous dumpling chain since it opened last year but was in no particular hurry to battle the queues of people (waits of up to an hour are apparently common) to see what all the fuss was about. Having finally made it there with a friend on Saturday I now know what all the fuss is about: Din Tai Fung’s soup dumplings. Celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain apparently once said the one dish he would travel half way around the world to eat again was “the soup dumpling at Din Tai Fung” and I can understand why.
Arriving in a traditional bamboo steamer basket, these deceptively delicate looking dumplings (the skins are almost translucent) bulge with a rich juicy broth that bursts in your mouth as you eat them. The idea, as an illustrated card on the table helpfully explains, is to dip the dumpling in a mix of soy and vinegar, place it on a spoon to catch the broth and then make a small hole in the skin of the dumpling with the chopstick. Once the steam has escaped you slurp the whole mouthful down with a few shreds of fresh ginger. We tried the restaurant’s signature xia long bao or pork soup dumplings and a crabmeat with crab roe and pork variety, and both were superb – juicy, intensely flavoursome, surprisingly filling and utterly moreish...
Again this was one of those occasions where I wished we’d had more people with us so we could try more of the dishes on the menu. The Shanghainese drunken chicken and water spinach with garlic we ordered were both super-tasty and satisfying companions to the dumplings, but sharing a table with two other couples meant we were tantalisingly close to an array of other dishes that looked as good, if not better. If the few dishes we did try are anything to go on however, there’s nothing safe or boring about this style of Chinese food. I am a convert.
Hmmm, might be time to get on the phone and organise another Friday night dinner (minus the hot fudge sundae)…
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