Well, well! Guess another mall houses one of the most popular dumpling restaurants called Din Tai Fung. This Taiwanese-influenced restaurant once started out as a cooking oil retail shop and has now become the world’s best dumplings! Din Tai Fung is known for their soup dumplings and noodles. What are soup dumplings? You will soon find out!
Their menu houses a variety of cold appetizer dishes, dumplings, noodles, rice, soup and even dessert buns.
Their hot and sour soup includes pork, bamboo shoots, tofu, egg, onions and scallions, and mushrooms. It is served hot and the thickened soup consistency makes it gooey to slurp!
The pork and shrimp wontons with spicy sauce is another well-ordered appetizer dish. This features soft and juicy wontons drenched in this delicious spicy sauce to give your taste buds a tang.
Now this is the dish we have all been waiting for: pork xiao long bao. The cool thing about these dumplings is that you can actually watch the chefs make the dumplings through the display glass window. They are supposed to be known for their identical symmetry. Inside these soft and delicate dumplings are juicy pork and savory soup. Be careful when you eat them! Too soon and the hot juices will burn your mouth. The skin is so soft and delicate, yet firm so they won’t rip when your chopsticks make contact.
This is what the inside looks like! This one features the pork and crab delicacies. How do I eat this?
1) the tip is the firmest part; hence, grab your dumpling by the tip
2) bite the tip to make a hole for the steam to come out
3) blow into the hole to cool it faster
4) and eat! 🙂
Shrimp and pork shao mai. These funny-looking things are two-fold protein instead of one. 😉
If you ever get bored of eating rice, try some shanghai rice cake with pork instead! These are chewy and glutinous rice cakes! I like to drench these in the chili oil.
This is noodle soup with pickled mustard greens and shredded pork. This is the perfect type of soup when you want some savory with a hint of sour.
And you know what is awesome about eating in this EAT area of the mall? Right across from DTF is a new dessert place called MATCHA MATCHA, featuring various drinks, soft serve and donuts in matcha flavors.
2 matcha soft serves with white mochi and red beans coming right up! And oh boy, was this delicious! The white mochi was soft and chewy. The red beans were slightly sweet. The matcha green tea was matcha green tea. Yum.
Stay tuned for more foodies at Westfield Santa Anita’s new Food Alley.
Happy Hump Day guys!
