Din Tai Fung London is coming
Tell a foodie ‘Din Tai Fung’, and her eyes immediately begin to sparkle, her stomach to rumble and her mucous membranes to produce saliva. Say: ‘Din Tai Fung is opening in London halfway through 2018’, and she will already have booked a return ticket to the British capital.
The Centre Point Project in London is experiencing some delays. Around the 34-storey tower on the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, in the heart of London, the new public square should already have been tiled.
Sushisamba
The tables and chairs at the cafés and restaurants that will line the square should already have been standing in the sunshine on the terrace too. Including those of the second London branch of Sushisamba, the Japanese-Brazilian-Peruvian fusion restaurant operating worldwide that has also had a location in Amsterdam since this week.
But the square will happen. And halfway through 2018, the only restaurant chain that foodies around the world have on their bucket lists will open there. The Taiwanese dim sum chain whose name is constantly on foodies’ lips: Din Tai Fung.
Din Tai Fung, maker of ‘pillows of happiness’
These dumpling makers will take their place on the square with their very first European location serving bamboo steamers full of deliciousness. But above all, full of soup dumplings, xiao long bao, with fillings such as crab and pork.
Xiao Long Bao
Foodies from every country are willing to travel many kilometres to have the bamboo steamers brought to their table at the chain founded in Taipei in 1980. This was already possible in several places outside Taiwan, by the way. The chain also has branches in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Australia. And even Los Angeles and, for example, Seattle do not have to go without the signature dish: the Shanghai-born ‘pillows of happiness’, as Anthony Bourdain calls his favourite dumplings, xiao long bao.
The Netherlands next?
But London, still ‘the New Dining Capital of the World’, did not yet have a Din Tai Fung. So it was/is time. Now we are waiting for the first location on the European mainland. Namely in the Netherlands. We may dream, right?
