din tai fung @ world square, city

So at long last, J&I managed to get ourselves a table at Din Tai Fung up at World Square. I can't even count the number of times we've been outside the place and was turned away by the queue! There was still a queue this time but shorter - we were eating at close to 8pm on a Thursday night so I guess the majority of the crowd had come and gone; so just a 15 minute wait which wasn't too bad - during which we decided on what we were eating and marked on our order form (so that as soon as we sat down we just handed it over).

I suppose we did jump the queue a little by opting to sit at a shared table. This shared table ended up being a table of 4 pairs of people at each corner of a round table that probably would've seated about 10/12. We were hungry and the fact that we were sitting with randoms didn't really bother us too much.

Prawn Siu Mai. So cute but gobbled up so quickly!

Sweet & Sour Soup which came in a bottomless bowl. I probably had about 3 bowls of this, J probably 5? I still think it was better value than the small size which was just a tiny bowl and cost more than half the price of this big one.

Din Tai Fung's infamous 'Xiao Long Baos' which you can watch being made at the restaurant's front windows. The skin that encased the filling wasn't too thick nor too thin but also held within it a dollop of soup filling which I've read is what the best xiao long baos should have. Mmm...tasty!

This was the Peanut Flavoured Noodle which is a tad on the heavy side but still very tasty.

'Tantanmen' is meant to be another traditional Chinese dish. Din Tai Fung seem to have adopted a new take on this dish - the flavours were definitely different, usage of ingredients was also very different to any other tantanmen I've had before.

Taro Spring Rolls for dessert - yum!

What I found really spectacular about this place was the speed of service and how polite/attentive all the waiters were. Whilst we were there, the restaurant was at full capacity but it was a matter of minutes that our food started to arrive. Dirty/empty plates were promptly cleared. We weren't even chasing and they noticed how long our dessert was taking and chased the kitchen up themselves (after looking at our docket). I was impressed!

Admittedly, I echo other's sentiments that it is a little on the pricey side but definitely a place still worth trying. I picked up one of their business cards and was actually quite surprised to find the number of outlets they have across the globe and a good majority of them are in Japan. Wow!