Can a snack bar that began life as a humble cooking-oil store make its way onto a list of the world's top ten restaurants? Taipei's Ding Tai Fung is living proof that it can be done given skill, perseverance, and sheer hard work.
Squeezed in between a couple of nondescript shop fronts on Taipei's busy Hsinyi Road, the Ding Tai Fung restaurant at first glance does not look much. Its façade is, not to put too fine a point on it, unimpressive; so unimpressive, in fact, that people new in town are hardly likely to spare it a passing glance. When Ding Tai Fung first opened its shutters, it in no way stood out from competitors in an area that was renowned for great Chinese restaurants, and its name made little impression even on those who lived in the immediate neighborhood. But years of devotion on the part of the owners eventually paid off. Ding Tai Fung gradually emerged from obscurity, despite its less-than-immaculate appear ance, and in 1993 its captivating Shanghai dishes won it the kind of accolade other restaurants can only dream of, when the New York Times named it one of the top ten restaurants in the world.
Whatever its humble origins, nowadays Ding Tai Fung has every reason to boast. As lunchtime looms, this famous restaurant is already starting to cast a spell on the gourmets waiting outside. The sight of so many people standing in line just to please their palates is interesting of itself. But come a bit closer, and the fragrance of steamed dumplings becomes a real distraction. "We were the only Chinese restaurant to be picked by the big American newspaper," says Yang Jih-hwa (楊紀華), the restaurant's owner.
Ding Tai Fung beat out all the restaurants in mainland China and Hong Kong, which surely must be considered the two major centers of genuine Chinese food? Really? Yang has his evidence to hand. He goes into his office, just big enough to hold one person, and produces some news clippings from a desk drawer. Pride of place is given to the New York Times dated January 17, 1993. Under the bold headline "Top-Notch Tables" come the words: "Ten food experts choose restaurants that inspire a pilgrimage." Juxtaposed with nine other restaurants from England, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, and the United States, Ding Tai Fung, along with its specialties, is enthusiastically commended by the internationally re nowned culinary expert Ken Hom.
Before long, local newspapers like the China Times and the United Daily News were boosting the popularity of Ding Tai Fung at home also. According to Yang, the media coverage resulted in a phenomenal growth in business, and regular patrons soon found themselves having to queue for the restaurant's much-vaunted dishes. "Of course, our business has a genuinely solid basis," Yang is quick to add. Indeed, Ding Tai Fung serves up "the real stuff," and it is all too easy to forget the years of effort that brought this once-mediocre snack bar to the attention of a gourmet like Ken Hom.
Ding Tai Fung was founded by Yang Bing-i (楊秉彝), now 71, who hails from mainland China's Shanxi province. "I started from scratch in Taiwan, with my wife," he says. This amiable man, who retired after being widowed two years ago, has no trouble recalling those early days. "Originally, Ding Tai Fung was a peanut oil shop, and in 1972 it became a small restaurant," he says. "At first, I knew nothing about the skills necessary for making dumplings and other Shanghai snacks, but I set out to learn."
Over the years Yang's experience grew, as he constantly refined Ding Tai Fung's recipes, learned how to choose the best quality flour and pork, and mastered the knack of kneading the dough to just the right consistency. "All we have is experience," maintains Yang Jih-hwa, who is the founder's son. "We don't use clocks and watches to time the dumplings; experienced chefs know by intuition when they're done."
Experience also taught the father-and-son team that their dishes tasted best if freshly made and steamed. Their insistence on maintaining standards has proved equally important, however, and has rewarded them with a long and growing list of repeat customers. "For the past two years, my husband and I have been coming here for dinner almost every day," says Li Jiann-yun (李劍雲), obviously a devoted aficionado. "If we can't come for some reason, we phone the boss and tell him." Interesting--but don't they get tired of eating at the same restaurant all the time? "No," Li says. "You can't get food like that anywhere else. The dishes aren't greasy, the restaurant's clean, and it provides a variety of great snacks." According to these two super-gourmets, who have visited many big cities in mainland China, Ding Tai Fung is unrivaled even by Shanghai's topflight restaurants.
If the locals are enthusiastic, what do visitors from overseas think of Ding Tai Fung? Mario Bezanilla from Chile has only words of praise. Pointing his chopsticks at a dumpling fresh from the steamer, he comments that he feels "light" after dining here, whereas "Italian or French food makes the stomach 'heavy.'" Maybe this partly accounts for the popularity of Ding Tai Fung, which obviously has a knack for finding out what people want. "We encourage our custom ers to have their dumplings with a mixture of vinegar and shredded ginger, which gets rid of any greasiness," Yang Jih-hwa says--a suggestion that turns out to be as good for the palate as it is for the health.
Fu Pei-mei (傅培梅) is probably Taiwan's best-known expert on Chinese cuisine. She has her own long-running TV cooking show, and has authored numerous books, among them Pei Mei's Chinese Snacks and Desserts. "Ding Tai Fung's dishes often impress customers with their thin but strong flour-based skins and juicy, well-seasoned pork fillings," she says. "The taste is just right, neither spicy nor bland, and the dumplings are all the more appetizing for having their skins attractively hand-pleated. They're so finely embellished that one could be forgiven for thinking the wrapping had been done by ma chine." Any weak points? "The pork fillings can be high in fat content," she concedes. "But if you want palatable food, a certain amount of fat is indispensable. Most customers don't find it a problem, mainly because the servings are kept on the small side."
Whatever the secret, the restaurant's extraordinary popularity is well documented. Yang Jih-hwa claims that on Sundays and holidays the four-story, 250-seat restaurant serves as many as 2,000 customers, most of whom have to wait in line for about an hour. Anyone who visits Ding Tai Fung at peak times (12:30 P.M. and 7:30 P.M.) and witnesses the constant flow of customers streaming in has no trouble believing it. Patrons have included the ROC president and vice president, and various legislators and celebrities. "Jackie Chan and John Lone have graced our restaurant," Yang says. "Come tomorrow and maybe you'll find the premier waiting in line!"
Sometimes supply just cannot keep up with the demands of even the most patient of customers--a not infrequent occurrence with Ding Tai Fung's chicken soup, for example. Made from chicken steamed slowly with ginger, scallions, and a little rice wine, Ken Hom declared it the best chicken soup he had ever tasted outside of his mother's kitchen. Other specialties are also in great demand--Yang Jih-hwa begins to recite their names as if they are his own children --siu loong bau ("little bamboo-basket dumplings"); soup-in-dumplings; dumplings with crabmeat; shrimp and pork steamed dumplings; and vegetable steamed dumplings. Shrimp buns and glutinous rice buns stuffed with pork also sell briskly. "In addition, we have beef broth, beef noodles, pickled vegetables, and eight-treasure rice," Yang adds. "Big pork buns and mashed red bean buns are popular, too. You can buy tsung-ts'u (rice cakes wrapped in leaves) here all year round, and at the time of the Mid-Autumn Festival we do moon cakes for a week."
The chefs in charge of producing these culinary wonders are versatile professionals who never seem to take a break from chopping meat, stuffing dough skins, and stacking up the bamboo steamers. At Ding Tai Fung, as in most other good Chinese restaurants, it takes at least five years before a novice chef makes his debut as a professional. "Most of them start their apprenticeship here in their early teens," Yang Bing-i says. "The most senior one has worked here for twenty-four years, which makes him almost as old as the restaurant."
Training a chef is not easy, and inducing a good one to stay can be even harder. Some leave Ding Tai Fung and continue their careers in large hotels, but there are also chefs who have returned to the fold after spending years away. "The working environment here isn't bad and our chefs are better paid than in other places," the elder Yang says with a touch of pride. "That's one reason why our dishes aren't cheap."
At Ding Tai Fung, quality is everything--a yardstick that can actually inhibit growth. For example, since 1993, when media exposure made the restaurant famous, Ding Tai Fung has served soup-in-dumplings only on weekends. Originally they were available on weekdays too, "but after that watershed year, we couldn't cope with the increased demand," Yang Jih-hwa says, "so we decided to cut supplies in order to preserve quality." This attitude is reflected in his refusal to open other branches. "We just want to keep what we've already accomplished," he says. "For the same reason, the menu's hardly changed over the past twenty-five years. Concentrate and you'll do well. It's the same as when you're steaming dumplings: No hasty actions, or you may find the flavor's deviated from the original."
Despite this justifiable caution, however, in October 1996 Ding Tai Fung did open its first ever overseas branch, in Tokyo's Shinjuku district. It was the owners of Japan's Takashimaya department store chain who came up with the idea of establishing a joint venture with Ding Tai Fung and provided the capital, while the restaurant sent two of its senior chefs to Japan to teach the locals their culinary skills. "In 1998 a second overseas Ding Tai Fung will open in Yokohama," Yang Jih-hwa says. "But that's it, for the foreseeable future."
There are in fact a few other restaurants named Ding Tai Fung. "As far as I know there are two in Hong Kong and one in Manhattan," Yang Jih-hwa admits. "But they're impostors, trying to make profits by using our name." He produces two letters from loyal but angry Ding Tai Fung patrons who went to those fake restaurants and felt cheated. "I'm not going to sue," Yang says. "But those two branches in Japan are the only genuine articles."
The Yangs do not feel they took much of a risk when they opened a branch in Tokyo. According to Shiraishi Takahiro, the vice president of a well known ladies' lingerie chain who has lived in Taiwan for four years and patronizes the restaurant once a week, "Ding Tai Fung has won public acclaim in Japan. More and more people know this Taipei restaurant, because the Japanese media have helped publicize it. On opening day in Tokyo last year, it was reported that people had to wait in line for two hours to get seats." Takahiro says that since his first visit to Ding Tai Fung in Taipei he has never again bothered to eat restaurant Chinese food during his visits home to Japan. Fellow-countryman and fellow gourmet Hiroshi Ichinosawa, president of Yokohama Tire Taiwan Co., is another keen fan of the restaurant. According to him, the best is never too expensive.
"Japanese people are gourmets and they can afford to be," says culinary expert Fu Pei-mei. "They're interested in searching out places that are known for their great food. For them, imports from China such as siu loong bau or pork buns can represent manna, as long as they're delicate." Indeed, delicacy seems to be the key to Ding Tai Fung's popularity with Japanese gourmets. "Japanese diners can more readily identify with the delicate but higher-priced dumplings on offer at Ding Tai Fung," Fu says. For this reason, the restaurant displays its menu and opening hours in Chinese and Japanese, as well as English, and most of the wait staff can speak at least a few words of Japanese. Such attention to service does not go unre warded: Some Japanese travel agents make Ding Tai Fung a stop on guided tours of Taipei.
Overseas Chinese form another distinct group of pilgrims who come from abroad to sample the delights of this culinary center. "Many of them buy takeaway for their friends in foreign countries," Yang notes. "But you need to be careful when you cook our dumplings at home. Steam them for no more than four minutes over a strong fire, otherwise the skin may burst." Has he ever thought of writing a book in which he gives away all his restaurant's secrets? "No," he says. "I don't think it would be any use, because some things can't be expressed in words."
So, want to try some famous Shanghai snacks? To eat the real thing, seek out Taipei's Ding Tai Fung. But be sure to go early if you plan on beating the crowds in search of some of the best food Taipei has to offer.