Popping Blood Orange Boba Martini at Din Tai Fung, Our Drink of The Week

It was 7:30 on a Saturday night. I was in a line of people that stretched from Sears to the Carousel Court–spanning an entire wing of South Coast Plaza. From one end to the other, it would be a two-and-a-half-hour wait. But this was only half of...

Photo by @ocwmktgdirector It’s hard to talk about JA Jiaozi without comparing it to Din Tai Fung. Outwardly, there are obvious similarities. Both give you a paper checklist onto which you scribble your order. Both focus on handmade dumplings,...

Ah, the xiao long bao. Shanghainese in origin, these diminutive dumplings begin life as balls of raw, minced pork embedded with bits of aspic. The pork morsels are then carefully wrapped around flattened rounds of dough, their tops pleated into...

I was, I confess, expecting to see a lot of mournful faces in the line outside the original U.S. Din Tai Fung in Arcadia last weekend, only a few hours before it was scheduled to shut down for a remodel. The faded strip-mall restaurant may not...

If you were anywhere near South Coast Plaza last month, you already know that the biggest restaurant opening in OC has three words and an insane wait time: Din Tai Fung. But if you're the kind of person who doesn't care for their xiaolongbaos (or...