On this trip to Seattle, I returned to down town Din Tai Fung location which I reviewed previously here. As I have written before, I think Din Tai Fung’s soup dumplings are over rated, they are good and consistent restaurant to restaurant and outing to outing, but I do not think they deserve the cult following that have achieved.  The wrappers are consistently thin and supple and almost never rupture or leak and the dumplings have a generous helping of soup.  My critiques have been that the dumplings are on the small side, the pork filling is bland and they don’t cook them to a high enough temperature.

But after this latest meal I need to revise viewpoint somewhat.  Ok, the pork soup dumplings are still under seasoned and the Shanghai style shumai are bland to the point of flavorless.  But the truffle and pork soup dumplings are a sensation.  The soup has a really strong truffle flavor that infused into the pork, which was actually well seasoned.  The down side is that instead of the usual 10 soup dumplings, you only get five dumplings in an order of truffle and pork soup dumplings, for about the same price as the plain pork ones.

They also now have desert Xia Long Bao which use a very think sheet of mochi as the dumpling wrapper.  We got the Chocolate & Mochi Xiao Long Baowhich had a ball of warm soft, almost molten, chocolate truffle inside. These things are genius. 

Din Tai Fung has also stepped up its vegan game since I last was at one about a year before the pandemic.  I recall the location in Seoul I tried about 10 years ago had no vegan dishes, the US locations I subsequently tried had a few dishes, but now they really seem to have expanded the vegan options.