Din Tai Fung opening in New York settled an argument that had been running for a decade, mostly by making it less interesting. The chain does one thing with unusual discipline: it produces a xiao long bao of a specified skin thickness at a specified weight, thousands of times a day, in a glass-walled room where you can watch it happen. That is a real achievement and it is not the same achievement as making the best single basket in the city. Worth being clear about which one you are shopping for.
The gap between a two-hour wait in Midtown and a fifteen-minute one at a counter you have not heard of is almost entirely a matter of knowing the counter. Tell Karpo where you are and how long you are willing to queue, and it will make that trade explicitly rather than sending you to the default.
What the chain is actually optimised for
Standardisation. The folding is measured, the weight is checked, the skin is held to a tolerance, and the result is that a basket in New York is very close to a basket in Taipei or Los Angeles. If you have never eaten a soup dumpling before, this is a good place to learn what one is supposed to be, because you will get the textbook version rather than somebody's off day.
The trade is that a system built to eliminate variance also eliminates the upside of variance. There is no basket at Din Tai Fung that will surprise you, and the pork filling in particular is seasoned toward the middle of the range. The truffle and crab versions exist to give the menu a top end and are the least interesting things on it.
The queue is the real cost
Waits at the Midtown location run long through the whole weekend and much of the week, and the walk-in system means turning up at seven on a Saturday is a decision to spend an evening in a lobby. Late lunch on a weekday - around two or half past - is the only reliably short window, and it is genuinely short.
Worth doing the arithmetic honestly: ninety minutes of waiting to save a thirty-minute subway ride to a counter with no wait is a bad trade, and it is the trade most people make by default because the famous name is the one they can remember.
What a better basket looks like
The specialists compete on things the chain deliberately does not vary. A thinner skin that sags visibly under its own broth and has to be handled carefully. A filling with more ginger and a coarser grind, so it reads as pork rather than as a smooth paste. Broth with enough gelatine that it goes slightly sticky on the lip, which is the sign of a stock that reduced properly rather than one thickened to spec.
These baskets are less reliable. You will occasionally get one that has burst in the steamer, and at a chain you never will. That is the actual choice on offer, and plenty of people should choose the chain.
Where to go instead, by borough
Flushing is the obvious answer and the food courts around Main Street have several counters doing nothing but XLB and pan-fried buns, at roughly half the Midtown price with no wait outside peak lunch. Go downstairs rather than staying at street level; the basements are where the single-item operations are.
Manhattan's Chinatown has a handful of Shanghainese rooms on the smaller streets that have been folding these for decades, and they are the closest good option to anywhere a visitor is likely to be staying. Sunset Park in Brooklyn is the third cluster, is the least crowded of the three, and is where the prices have moved least.
Order the pan-fried ones too
Sheng jian bao are the underrated item at almost every one of these counters. Same soup-filled principle, but a thicker leavened dough, fried flat-side down in a covered pan so the bottom goes hard and the top stays pillowy, finished with sesame and scallion. Four of them is a meal rather than a starter.
They are also considerably more forgiving of a short wait than XLB are, which makes them the right order if you are eating with people who are not going to sit down the moment the food lands. The chain does not really compete in this category, which is part of why the specialist counters are worth the trip.
The practical summary
Go to the chain if it is your first soup dumpling, if you are with people who need a proper restaurant with chairs and a bathroom, or if you happen to be in Midtown at two on a Tuesday. It will be good and it will be exactly what it was last time.
Go to Flushing or Sunset Park if you have eaten these before, if you want the version with a skin thin enough to be a risk, and if you would rather spend the ninety minutes on a train than in a lobby. Either way, eat them within about four minutes of the basket landing - that part does not change no matter where you are.
What to order if you go to the chain anyway
Skip the specialty XLB. The truffle and crab versions cost roughly double and the additions mostly disappear against the broth, which is seasoned to carry pork. Two baskets of the standard pork between two people is the correct order and the one the kitchen is genuinely built around.
Do order the cucumber salad and the wontons in chilli oil. Both are made to a spec that survives volume far better than a delicate dumpling skin does, and the chilli oil in particular is better than it needs to be. The noodle dishes are the weakest part of the menu and the thing to leave for somebody else.
Tags: #DinTaiFung #XLB #XiaoLongBao #SoupDumplings #NewYorkCity #NYCFood #Flushing #ShengJianBao #NYCDumplings #SunsetPark
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Ask Karpo first
The right dumpling depends on whether you are optimising for certainty or for the best basket available tonight. Ask Karpo which counters near you are actually open and how long the wait is before you commit the evening to a lobby.
