Taiwan– category –

Brown Crumbs That Hold the Table Together In some Taiwanese eateries, a faint smell of sweet browning drifts through the room.It is not meat.It is not soy sauce. It is lighter than both.Drier, too. On the edge of a bowl, small brown crum...

A rice thief, and its partner in water spinach In Taiwanese diners, a brown paste often sits on the table.It looks cloudy, almost unfinished. Shacha sauce (shacha jiang) is not there to decorate anything.It is there to thicken bland ingr...

A silver tin on the table, and the texture of sand on the tongue In Taiwanese eateries, when I glance at the bottles set on the table, there is often a brown, clouded paste resting there. It is mixed into stir-fries, dissolved into hot p...

A soup bun that returned as something to drink In Tamsui, in Shilin Night Market, and sometimes in Shanghai’s Yuyuan, I see the same scene. Tourists hold a bun the size of a fist.They push a straw into it.They drink. It is called tangbao...

Color, tea leaves, and the extra fold Xiaolongbao began as a local form, then traveled outward. Din Tai Fung led that movement.In Los Angeles, in London, in Singapore, the same sign appears.Steamers stack up.The same shape arrives at the...

Xiaolongbao Turned into Macarons In 2010, a small incident was said to have happened in the world of xiaolongbao. A bamboo steamer opened.What should have been white was not white. Red, green, black, yellow.Candy colors mixed into the st...

Rebuilding soup, fat, and structure without pork Xiaolongbao is already everywhere.In London, in Los Angeles, in Singapore, steam still rises from stacked baskets. But the wider it spreads, the more one problem remains.Halal. In Kuala Lu...

Chimei, the factory brand that made the xiaolongbao ordinary Taiwan’s xiaolongbao became global through Din Tai Fung.The sign is easy to recognize.The bamboo steamers are stacked the same way in Los Angeles, London, and Singapore. But th...

A record of an oil shop, a tenant dim sum maker, and the first steam The story of Din Tai Fung is often told in a clean line.An oil shop failed.The founder invented xiaolongbao as a last move.The city responded.The world followed. That l...

The New York Times, 1993 On January 17, 1993, The New York Times ran a feature titled Top-Notch Tables. The list looked strange by the standards of the time. A three-star room in Paris.A polished dining room in London.A hotel Chinese res...