We hadn't really planned to eat at Din Tai Fung during our recent trip to Los Angeles. It was Saturday morning and we were deciding on where we would eat dinner. Din Tai Fung was one of many places on our list of possibilities, and after causally mentioning to my friend who lives near Torrance that Din Tai Fung was one of the places we were thinking about going to for dinner, she said "we'll totally meet you there!" And so that's how we ended up here.
I'm so glad she decided to join us, and offered to go early to put our name in to get a table, because the process to get a table is both long and head-scratching. First you give your cell number to the hostess out front, and then you wait for them to text you. Once your phone buzzes, you go back to the hostess, but WAIT, that doesn't mean your table is ready. They hand you a menu and say they'll call you when our table is ready. What?!
The entire process took over an hour, in addition to however long my friend waited on our behalf before we even got there. So yes, people aren't exaggerating when they say it takes an hour or more to eat here! But sit tight and be patient, because the food is well worth the wait.
Once we did get seated (we lucked out with a private room since we had 8 people in our party), we put in our orders and in no time the food started arriving. Considering how crowded it was, I was quite surprised and pleased at how quickly the food came, especially since we were all starving by now.
Here's what we shared family-style:
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| Cucumber Salad |
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| Chicken Fried Noodles |
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| Sauteed String Beans with Garlic |
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| Noodles with Minced Kurobuta Pork Sauce |
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| Braised Beef Noodle Soup |
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| Shrimp Fried Rice |
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| Kurobuta Pork XiaoLongBao |
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| Shrimp and Kurobuta Pork Pot stickers |
I had only heard great things about the XLB (which were amazing!), so I was pleasantly surprised by how good everything else was! We doubled the orders for the XLB and fried rice, and it came out to the perfect amount of food for our party of 8. As for the XLB, I'm now a believer! They probably would have tasted even better if I had eaten them the proper way (apparently you're supposed to poke a hole in the dumpling and drink the soup first!).
DIN TAI FUNG
Del Amo Fashion Center, 21540 Hawthorne Blvd #519
Torrance, CA 90503
(310) 214-1175
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