Shanghai Ding Tai Fung 鼎泰豐

Saw this brand new restaurant as I was bussing by the other day, I was intrigued because it is rare to see such a big Chinese restaurant in this area. Decided that it was something I definitely needed to try!

Went with my friend for lunch today. Upon entering the restaurant, I felt like I was in a Richmond restaurant, which is cool because we are in Downtown! It was quite spacious and comfy, dishes were sparkling clean because everything was new!

Took us forever to order because the menu was hhhhuuuugggeee. After around 15 minutes (!), finally decided on some items. In my mind, I wondered if it was enough food...

The first was the famous Xiao Long Bao (XLB!) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaolongbao. There were different types of XLB on the menu, some filled with crab meat, some with pork, etc. We decided to get the pork ones. The skin was strong enough that I could pick them up with my chop sticks without puncturing them, I proceeded to eat them by biting a little skin off the side, and then slurping the meat juice right out, mmm delicious! XLB's were fresh, I would recommend this one.

Next, we had the Shanghai Stir-Fried Noodles. I always get this dish when I'm at these sort of "northern" Chinese restaurants. This dish's signature is the amount of oil used to make it, it IS very oily, but I'm not eating this everyday. The noodles were smooth. The plate wasn't overly salty. Decent amount of thin pieces of pork. Would recommend this one also if you don't mind the oil.

Was gonna get the sticky rice roll at first, but they did not have it. So decided to get this Cold Duck dish. It is not ice cold, but a warm temperature. I liked this one. The duck wasn't fat, only a thin slice of fat between the skin and the meat. The meat was just the right level of hardness. The sauce is a little sweet if I remember correctly, interesting. This one is a little pricy at $10, but it tastes good.

The restaurant was quite busy in the lunch hour, interested to see how they will do in the future as right now, they basically own Downtown exclusively with this type and size of restaurant.