5 Seconds in Seattle

Din Tai Fung is a famous restaurant originating in Taipei that specializes in xiao long bao.  The restaurant has several chains in Asia, but only one chain in the U.S. until quite recently, when the newest branch opened in Bellevue, WA.

Xiao long bao, colloquially known as soup dumplings, are traditionally filled with pork. The meat filling is wrapped, along with a gelatinized broth, in a thin stretchy dough and then steamed. The heat from steaming melts the gelatin into liquid broth, producing dumplings that seem to magically envelop hot soup.  The best way to approach the soup dumpling is to make a small hole in the dough to let the broth cool down before taking the first bite.

  

At both of the Din Tai Fung branches in the U.S. there is a large window in the kitchen through which you can see staff working in a rapid assembly line to produce dumplings.  One person stretches the dough out into a long rope; the next person divides the rope of dough into individual pieces that are weighed to ensure the size is uniform:

Next in the assembly line, a worker flattens the individual pieces of dough into circles with a wooden roller. Then another person places meat filling and gelatinized broth onto the circles of dough:

In the final sequence, the last worker neatly twists the edges of dough together to close up the dumpling and sends it to the steamer:

This is where I chose to go in the 5 seconds I was able to spend in the Seattle area before flying over the Cascade Mountains to my next locum tenens position in northeastern Washington state.  Delicious!