khiemtran | Din Tai Fung...

We've made it to Din Tai Fung at 11am just as the doors open and... Oh no! There's a queue already! Surely no-one else could have been as smart as us...

Luckily, the queue moves fast and we get seated to order. If you get there later, you'll need to wait outside for a table to free up, but at least you can prepare your order form while you wait.

Their speciality is Xiao Long Bao (小笼包, or maybe more appropriately, 小籠包), steamed dumpling filled with soup and pork. There's something of a magic trick to get the soup inside. Can you guess how? Have some thinking dumplings (these are filled with pork and shrimp)...

Figured it out? They let the soup set solid before using it, so they can just put a little cube along with the meat filling in the middle of the disc of pastry, then wrap it up.

Din Tai Fung's dumplings are all precisely made, but it's their soup that gives them the edge. It's rich and fragrant, and bursting with savoury flavours.

So, now that we've got the soup inside the dumpling, how do we get it out again? Well, there are many ways to eat a xiao long bao. The two you must not do are to bite it from the side as you would a normal dumpling (the soup will pour out everywhere) and to put it all into your mouth in one gulp (the soup may scald you). Yep, I tried both of these approaches when I first encountered these dumplings in Shanghai...

My normally preferred way of eating them is to pick them up with chopsticks, make a small bite near the top of the dumpling and drink the soup as though from a little cup. This is especially handy if you only chopsticks to eat them with.

The Din Tai Fung approved method is also good and is shown below. Place the dumpling on your spoon, and add some black vinegar and ginger (or whatever else you feel like). Then pierce the side with your chopstick to let the soup run out into the spoon. Then enjoy.

This does defeat the purpose a little of putting the soup into the dumpling in the first place, but you do get an explosion of flavours and textures in your mouth as everything hits all at once. Plus, you're less likely to get an explosion of soup colours all over your clothing.

Oh, and you don't have to come to Sydney to try Din Tai Fung, of course. It's a Taiwanese chain, and they are slowly spreading around the world.