It’s not often that my wife Jun and I had to wait in line at the restaurant (for lunch no less) where we already had reservations. When we showed up at the New York City location of Din Tai Fung, the much-hyped Taiwanese dim sum chain with hundreds of locations around the world, that is exactly what we encountered. As I couldn’t secure a reservation at the regular dining room, we had to settle for sitting at the bar area (which you need to show your IDs to enter). The New York outpost’s opening earlier this summer was one of the most celebrated openings in the city, but does it live up to the hype? With a caveat that we tried only a limited number of dishes, Jun and I weren’t so sure.

Our usual go-to dishes when we visit a dim sum restaurant are xiao long bao (the famed soup dumpling), spicy wontons and one or two vegetable dishes like cucumber salad and string beans. That was exactly what we ordered this time. Before moving onto the xiao long bao (which is really what the chain is known for), let’s briefly talk about the other dishes. Cucumber salad was solid with surprisingly spicy kick from the chili sauce below. String beans were fine as well, but how hard would it be to mess up this dish? On the other hand, the spicy wontons (we tried the one with chicken inside) were a mild disappointment, with the chili sauce not as impactful as we had hoped. As to the supposed highlight of our lunch, the Kurobuta pork xiao long bao was mostly just fine. At $18.5 for 10 pieces, it sounds like a huge bargain in a city with still very high reservation inflation, but each piece was smaller than we were used to having in Chinatown. I guess the smaller size makes it more convenient to eat it without the risk of the soup spilling out. More importantly, the flavor of the soup inside was aromatic, but seemingly lacked the kind of depth we experienced at some of our best dim sum restaurants during our culinary journey. We did end up ordering another xiao long bao to try as many of these pieces as possible, and we couldn’t stop thinking about other places that really wowed us.

As mentioned above, Din Tai Fung is still very much in demand for reservations so if you do want to try it, booking in advance is essential. You will likely have better luck in the bar area which offers the same menu and also features the beverage menu more prominently (there was a special collaboration cocktail with The Wicked movie on our visit). The spacious, shiny dining room where you can see the kitchen staff in action across the glass wall shows the high level of ambition that Din Tai Fung has for its Big Apple project but to me it seemed to lack a more personal touch. If you are a dim sum, is Din Tai Fung worth a trip and the hassle for reservation? Sure, just for the sake of experiencing what it’s like to dine at a chain with fans worldwide. If you are an absolutist when it comes to the quality of dim sum, however, I’m not exactly sure you will walk away happy.

KenScale: 7.25/10 (Jun’s Score: 7.25/10)

Address: 1633 Broadway, New York, NY 10019

Website: https://dtf.com/en/locations/new-york

Reservation via Yelp