In the lobby of the Din Tai Fung dumpling house on Baldwin Avenue (1088 and 1108) is an article from the New York Times in 1993 ranking the original restaurant opened by owner Frank Yang’s father in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1969 as one of the ten best gourmet restaurants in the world.
Frank Yang’s own restaurant here in Arcadia, which he opened in March, 2000, has garnered many of its own accolades from the Los Angeles Times as well as top rankings in the Zagat and Michelin guides. On Friday the famous eatery picked up a ranking from USA Today as one of “10 great places (in the entire United States) to taste, toast the Chinese new year,” as selected by Jennifer 8. Lee, author of “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles.”
Although she lists the restaurant as having two locations Los Angeles despite both being side-by-side in Arcadia (Din Tai Fung does the same thing on its own web site, an obvious similar marketing ploy as Methodist Hospital of Southern California, L.A./Ontario International Airport, and the Los Angels of Anaheim), Lee says in USA Today that Din Tai Fung’s dumplings, which are usually filled with pork and crab and are served with soup, “have consistently high quality, time and time again; they’re excellent.”
Following are several videos I shot several years ago with owner Frank Yang at his original shop and then during construction and immediately following the opening of his new shop:
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Get the Flash Player to see this content.— By Scott Hettrick