Family Lunch at Din Tai Fung, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong ~ Cheftonio's Blog

Since we only had light breakfast and had a lot of walking in the Harbour City, we decided to eat lunch earlier so we could have a relaxing stroll along Tsim Sha Tsui area before we head to the airport. We decided to go back to Silvercord Just across Ocean Termical since we were planning to check on H&M after lunch. Din Tai Fung had just opened a few minutes earlier and was just starting to accommodate diners into the restaurant. We hurriedly queued up and we were blessed as we got the last round table good for 6. Because we were one of the last people to be seated, our table was located at the far end of the restaurant near the kitchen. Since it was all our first time, it was actually a good thing because I got to peek at orders of other diners as we passed through their tables.

After we were seated, We were given the menu which includes an order sheet and a pencil so we could mark our orders to be submitted to the kitchen for preparation. Self-order cards is actually a good practice in Hong Kong (especially for those establishments that has a fast turn-over of guests and huge headcount) because guests need not to be attended to all at the same time by the wait staff and also to avoid misunderstanding of orders as some staff may not be well-versed in English. Order sheets are in Chinese with its corresponding English translation.

Other than the menu, there is also this card that teaches you how to eat Xiao Long Bao properly.

Because Din Tai Fung is famous for XLPs, they teach everyone how they should handle the XLP to prevent bursting it's skin and for diners to fully enjoy the soup inside.

It didn't take long for our orders to be served, we ordered the following:

Although it's a bit spicy, this appetizer is really good. Almost all tables ordered this dish before they started their main meal.

One of the highlights of our meal was Xiao Long Bao and we really loved how they prepared it. The skin is thick enough to hold the yummy soup but not too thick to overpower the meat inside. You could also taste that the meat is freshly made. They do have a various kinds of XLP but we decided to try Shrimp Dumplings for a change. The combination of Luffa (aka Chinese okra) with Shrimp was good and we got to enjoy it very much.

Our first fried rice - Shrimp. Normal fried rice for me, except that they didn't chop the shrimps probably to show diners that genuine and good quality shrimps are used in the preparation of this dish.

On our second fried rice, we chose the ordinary egg fried rice with deep-fried pork chop. There was nothing much special about this dish except that the meat in the pork chop was good as there was not much fat.

Our last but definitely one of the best dimsum - Steamed glutinous rice with pork shao-mai. I'm not much of a sticky rice fan but I had my second piece because it was just so good! Perfect combination of pork and sticky rice.

Below is the complete menu of Din Tai Fung. If you could notice, they have a vast selection of food and for easier ordering, they made separate tabs to group them together per same category/kind. In addition, they also placed an icon just beside the name so that diners would know the key ingredients of the said dish.