| rev:text
| - Overpriced and underwhelming. The reviews here are glowing, but I've had the real Din Tai Fung in Taipei and xiao long bao at other places that were better. I've even had XLB in food courts that tasted better than this DTF.
Ok, to be honest, it's not terribly bad XLB. If you've never had it before, then this place is a decent introduction. The issue is that the claims of this being the best XLB in the city make me feel sad about the state of chinese food in Toronto. The soup in the XLB is pretty good. Unfortunately, the skin is not as thin as the one in Taipei. Taiwanese cuisine likes to mingle a bit of sweet potato flour in with the wheat flour to make the wrapping more elastic. The XLB skin here was competently made, but without this key ingredient, it doesn't have the same stretch, and the soup doesn't burst into your mouth as you bite in.
The ground pork was not ground finely enough and also wasn't tenderized long enough. I'm looking for a pork filling that is tender and whole, almost like a well made siu mai. It should be the pleasure point of meaty-ness after the first taste of soup. Unfortunately, the meat filling here tasted not much better than the meat in cheap frozen dumplings that you buy at the grocery store (2 bags for $5). The meat just wasn't flavourful or special in any way.
Alright, given all this, the most unforgivable sin was the price. At about $5 for 5 pieces, this is ridiculously overpriced for such low quality. This place is just riding on the original and authentic DTF's reputation with a counterfeit, lower-quality product.
This place opened at 11am. It was half full ten minutes later when I arrived. By half past, the restaurant was packed and there were five people waiting at the atrium. The management has no incentive at all to provide anything beyond a mediocre product with this kind of popular market demand.
I also had the hong you zhao sou, or spicy wontons in red sauce. The presentation wasn't as pretty as the pictures here. The chef must have moved on, perhaps to their new location in Scarborough. The wontons were almost flavorless. Once again, I think the wontons shared the same pork meat mix as the XLB, and that meat wasn't marinated with sufficient ingredients or time. The red sauce had more coloring than spice. Quite disappointing. There should have been some soy sauce and sesame oil in there, but I couldn't really taste them. One of the worst examples of this dish I've had. And it's such an easy dish to prepare too. Boil wontons and put in sauce. How could it all go so wrong?
I also had the beef noodle soup, which I order everytime I see it on the menu. The broth was good. Like I mentioned above, this kitchen has a good person working on the soups. The noodles were alright. Freshly made. There was an initial taste of bread flour and yeast which went away as the noodles soaked in the soup. The meat was disappointing. Again, not much flavor, not much marinade. It looks good, and it's tender enough, but I don't know why or how they went so easy on the seasoning and spices. The preserved chopped pickles traditionally served with this soup were terrible. Almost tasted like hot dog relish, but not as crisp. Whoever made this has never had the real chopped pickled greens.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)