"It's a really good dumpling. It's just not the best dumpling ever.

“It’s a really good dumpling. It’s just not the best dumpling ever. And, unfortunately, “best” is what Din Tai Fung promisesaE”set up right from the start to offer an experience it cannot possibly provide. Go online. Read the fawning reviews of other locations (one in L.A., others scattered around the Pacific RimaE”in Kyoto, Sendai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, Jakarta, Seoul, and elsewhere) and the way that people make a mecca of this place, render unto it revelatory powers and lay claim to crowded dining-room epiphanies…You don’t go to Din Tai Fung for dumplings; you go for the best dumplings in the world. That’s what I was expecting, rubbing shoulders with all the other dumpling supplicants and then sitting in the actual dining room, dying for that first taste and ready for a revelation of my own.”Read Jason Sheehan’s full review of Din Tai Fung.Photos by Joshua Huston.Published on February 23, 2011