Normally, after a wisdom tooth extraction and stitches, people eat less since they only have one side to chew and they have to be careful not to infect their incision. I am exempted from this. For some reason, I started eating more after my oral surgery. Sigh. Moreover, I have like 5+ reviews to post up still.
As well, from now on, you might feel and think "WOW! These food pictures are SO AMAZING!" because 阿哥 purchased a new camera and I stole it to food blog. Love it to bits at the moment. :)
For Christmas Eve dinner, my family and I went to Ding Tai Fung 鼎泰豐 in First Markham Place for Shanghainese food. I love love love their 小籠包 xiaolongbao. But I don't come here often because everything here is expensive relative to other restaurants. Ding Tai Fung is a famous restaurant chain operated in a few countries, but I don't think the one here at FMP doesn't use the same recipe as the original one in Taiwan.
阿哥 requested 宮保雞丁, a usually spicy dish with diced chicken and peanuts. I didn't think it was spicy at all (and this is coming from a person that can't eat spicy) and portions were tiny for a $10 dish. And I think the peanuts to chicken ratio was too high.
Leek and pork dumpling 菲菜餃. They were SO BIG. It was the size of 2 normal dumplings. And it a lot of chives inside. More chives than pork for sure.
Fried onion pancake 荵油餅. Not overly oily and pretty tasty!
Garlic-flavoured sliced tender pork 蒜泥白肉. It was horrible. It was mostly meat, which were rough and chewy (you can tell from the above picture) and the sauce was weird. Do not order this dish here. It's so much better at Northern Dumpling Kitchen down the street.
Chinese spinach stir-fried in garlic sauce 蒜蓉炒豆苗. Average, since it's not the best season for Chinese spinach right now.
Shanghainese style stir-fried rice cakes 上海炒年糕. After visiting Shanghai, I've developed a liking for stir-fried rice cake. I like their chewiness but it tends to be way too oily. This one included slices of cabbage and shredded pork. It tasted pretty good but it was too oily for my liking.
Okay I have a habit of saving the best for last. Here's the 小籠包 xiaolongbao!
Steamed little dumplings filled with pork and juice wrapped in translucent, thin layer of dumpling skin.
Of course we had 2 orders of them. 1 is definitely not enough.
A single 小籠包. This is how I eat it (the best way to eat a xiaolongbao). First, dip it in red vinegar.
Then bite the very peak part off, letting the hot steam come out while still preserving the pork & juice together in the thin wrapper.
It'll look like this.
Now take a bite from the side this time, when it's less piping hot but still really hot. You'll get a bite of heaven: thin wrapping + pork meat + juice all at the same time.
Yum.
In my opinion, there are 3 things that make up a perfect 小籠包 xiaolongbao:
1) Thin, strong dumpling skin - normal dumplings have thicker skin but xiaolongbao's are distinguished with their ultra thin skin that is almost translucent. But at the same time, it must be strong enough to hold the filling + juice when picked up by a pair of chopsticks at the very top part of the xiaolongbao.
2) The right amount & taste of pork - although Asians like to have more bang for their buck regarding everything, too much pork in a xiaolongbao ruins the whole thing. If you want a lot of pork in your dumpling, order leek and pork dumplings. The pork meat must be marinated well as well.
3) Juice! Juice! Juice! - And of course, they must contain a lot of juice so when you bite into it, it just jumps into your mouth!
Ding Tai Fung mastered both #1 and #3; their xiaolongbao's have very thin skins and so much juice! Like 50% of it is filled with juice. But we found the pork meat used is a bit rough in texture. Overall, still the best in Toronto in my opinion.
Okay sorry. Got a bit carried away with new camera + my favourite food. We also ordered hot&sour soup 酸辣湯 and pan-fried pork buns 生煎包. The meal came up to ~$25 per person? A bit expensive compared to other Shanghainese places especially for their small portions. But I would come here just to eat their 小籠包.
Ding Tai Fung 鼎泰豐 - within First Markham Place
3235 Hwy 7 Markham, ON
(905) 943-9880
one in taiwan is <3
xiaolongbao is <3
I wish I can go to the one in Taiwan :(
that's on my list of "Things to do with Katherine", go to Taiwan for the food market and food and food.