Din Tai Fung
On the east coast everything’s close. In a matter of hours you can be at a
PLETHORA of cultural attractions. But in California, once you’ve been to Santa
Barbara, San Diego and Palm Springs, you’ve seen it all, you stay home.
Well, when I first arrived, I checked out all the locations from the Frank
Zappa and Firesign Theatre records. But really, after you’ve been to the desert
and the beach, it all seems a blur, it’s all the same. You rarely leave your
comfort zone.
Then again, you can’t go anywhere.
The 101 was a parking lot. At 4 p.m. Where was everybody GOING? I mean I
understand weekday rush hour, but who needs to go to Burbank on a late Saturday afternoon. Why are all these people OUT HERE?
Took us the better part of an hour to make it from Sherman Oaks to Silver
Lake. And after assembling all the elements of our party, we piled into
Stephen’s car for the journey to the cornfield, in downtown L.A.
I trusted him on this one. That it was cool. That you had to see it.
But what was fascinating was everybody I mentioned it to was flummoxed,
they’d never heard of it. I doubted there COULD BE a cornfield in downtown L.A.
Then again, nobody goes downtown anyway. During the journey I remarked that
I’d never BEEN on this road before. And then suddenly, we were there.
Go to: NotACornfield. Check it out. Then again, you can
only get the full effect WALKING THROUGH IT! A little bit of Iowa in the heart
of the city. I mean we’re walking amongst the stalks and the contradiction
was palpable. The mixture of country and metropolis.
And when we got back in the car, Stephen proffered a dinner idea. Did we
want to go to this Chinese noodle house. In Arcadia. His client from Taiwan had
turned him on to it. This was the only U.S. outlet of a legendary place in
Taipei. I asked Felice in the back seat, did she want to go? Sure, to TAIPEI!
We had a laugh, and then Stephen put the car in gear.
And it was funny. We had no idea how to GET to Arcadia. Oh, we knew where
Arcadia was, but how the hell did we get there from HERE? In the middle of
nowhere in the heart of the city.
We got on the 5. And then we were on the 210. Driving into oblivion.
It’s hard to understand if you’re from the east, how somebody could come all
this way and live SO FAR from the ocean.
I mean I’m only twenty blocks away from the beach. I can walk, not that I
usually do, but the first thing I do when I get back from out of town is take
the 10 to PCH, to communicate with the water. What was the rationalization for
living this far away from reality? It’s not like Arcadia is an oasis. It’s
reclaimed desert. 100 degrees during the summer. A land of endless strip
malls. Yes, here on this ugly, flat landscape lives the American dream. For
Asian immigrants.
L.A. is not New York. Where Chinatown is just a cab ride away. This is
TWENTY MILES away. It’s its own private ghetto. Brand new, with Chinese
lettering on the structures. It was a bizarre turn on segregation. Separate by
CHOICE!
Not finding a spot in the lot, I was dropped off to negotiate our place in
line. You see you just can’t waltz into Din Tai Fung. If you’re waiting for
less than half an hour, you feel lucky.
I got a number from the hostess. And a menu. Which I couldn’t understand.
Oh, there was soup. And rice. But where were the main courses? Where were
the NOODLES?
Turns out Stephen had it wrong. Din Tai Fung is not a noodle house, but a
DUMPLING HOUSE! And right behind the plate glass window were a bunch of men
huddled, churning the little delicacies out.
It was akin to the sperm scene in "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About
Sex". The men were completely in white. Covered from head to toe. I even
saw a white Yankee cap.
There were two groups. In the middle off the tiny kitchen four men were
having a party. Laughing as they created the dumplings.
And right in front of us, right on the other side of the window, were three
more men. In an assembly line. Making dumplings.
There were little stubs of dough. Which the first man rolled flat. And
then, with his tiny rolling pin, he turned up the ends, creating a little crater.
The second man, he inserted the filling. Shrimp and pork while we were
watching. He picked up a shrimp, embedded it in pork and then placed the
concoction in the crater/dish and folded it over.
Then the third man, he crimped the edges.
The end result was the kind of perfection you see in the supermarket. But,
in this case, they were all HAND MADE!
By seven Latinos. Not an Asian in sight. You got the impression if an
Asian kid wanted to make dumplings his father would say to study MATH! And, I
couldn’t make these dumplings for more than half an hour. How could these men
complete a full shift, making the same thing over and over?
And then we were called to our table. Where the waitress picked up our
order, which we’d completed while waiting, filling out the form like the menu in a
sushi bar.
And then, as we kicked back with our tea, we began extracting our chopsticks
from their wrappers.
And, just as I was about to roll the paper into a ball, I noticed there were
INSTRUCTIONS! How to eat the dumplings.
Turns out you mixed the ginger with the vinegar. Then you picked up the
dumpling with the chopsticks and inserted it in this concoction. THEN, you placed
the dumpling in a soup spoon. And ladled more ginger and vinegar atop it.
Then, you were to punch a tiny hole in the dumpling and suck out the juice.
And then swallow it whole.
Believe me, it sounded as complicated as it reads. It was too much to
comprehend. Until the dumplings finally arrived. SO MUCH FOOD arrived there wasn’t room for it on the table.
The seaweed noodle appetizer, not on the menu, which Stephen had seen on a
table on the way to the bathroom and had ordered.
Hot and sour soup. Which was called "Sour and Spicy Soup", but was the same
thing.
Shrimp fried rice. Succulent string beans.
And the dumplings. Endless dumplings. Forty or so dumplings for the four of
us and Rufus. Who played with his chopsticks and didn’t eat a thing.
So, I followed the instructions. It wasn’t that difficult. I sucked up the
dumpling and it was so TASTY! I started shoveling them into my mouth.
But it was such a ritual for a tiny little morsel. I love ginger, and
vinegar rings my bell. But I just couldn’t figure out why I had to bite into the
dumpling and suck out all the juice BEFORE slurping it up.
So, about the fifth dumpling in, I eliminated that step.
Big mistake. I ended up covered in dumpling juice. There WAS a method to
the madness.
There was the occasional Anglo. But really, Din Tai Fung was an insiders
place. For those in the know. Asians. It felt exotic. Like being on a trip.
Only really, we were just a hop, skip and a jump from our backyard.
