Soup Dumplings as Soft Power

Enter and climb down the set of stairs, however, and it is cavernous, capable of seating nearly 500 people—many of whom have a direct view of the restaurant’s famous dumplings being made through a giant glass window into the kitchen.

New York’s branch of DTF is the largest outpost of a global culinary empire and was one of the longest awaited openings this summer in a city that many consider the world’s food capital. (Delays in the launch even led angry wannabe customers to leave one-star reviews.)

The Din Tai Fung location in Manhattan, New York, on July 17. Rishi Iyengar/Foreign Policy

When the company was forced to shut down 10 years later, Yang and his wife Lai Pen-Mei—a coworker he met on the job—decided to open a cooking oil store of their own, which did well until the early 1970s when the advent of canned oil led to a sharp drop in business. On the advice of a restaurateur friend, the couple divided their store into two and started selling Chinese soup dumplings known as xiao long bao—which soon became popular enough for them to close the oil store and focus on the food.

Half a century later, it’s fair to say that focus has more than paid off. Din Tai Fung now has more than 170 restaurants (and counting) across a dozen countries. In 2024 alone, in addition to Manhattan, it opened new branches in Phuket, Thailand; Singapore; Dubai; and the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California.

For Taiwan, which has only 12 full-fledged embassies left in the world, the proliferation of DTF is a soft-power triumph.

Indeed, the global appeal of DTF has also helped raise Taiwan’s profile on the world stage, and the restaurant wears its Taiwanese roots as a badge of honor. “We have always just felt strongly that the food should be authentic to Taiwan, where we originated from,” Aaron Yang, the founder’s grandson who now co-leads its U.S. business with his brother, Albert, told the Los Angeles Times last year. (The Yangs declined an interview request for this story.)

American chef Anthony Bourdain walks into a Din Tai Fung in Taipei, Taiwan, during a visit for his show The Layover on July 2, 2012.Reuters

That’s despite the fact that Din Tai Fung’s signature xiao long bao was actually invented in mainland China in either the 18th or the 19th century, depending on which origin story you believe.

But to some, like Liz Kao, that doesn’t make it any less Taiwanese.

“Taiwanese food is immigrant food,” said Kao, a Taipei-based food writer who curated the menu for Taiwan President Lai Ching-te’s inauguration banquet in May. The island’s cuisine has been shaped by successive influxes over several decades, she explained, with each group bringing its own ingredients and flavor profiles, from Hokkien and Canton immigrants in the early 1900s, to Japanese colonial rule from 1895 to 1945, followed by the exodus from mainland China at the end of the civil war in 1949 that created Taiwan as it is today. “I would say the mixture itself is a distinct identity,” she said. “We are trying to form a Taiwanese identity of our own and we definitely want to say Taiwanese cuisine is different from Chinese cuisine.”

The effort to assert its distinctiveness from China has become a priority for Taiwan in recent years, and has assumed greater significance amid the growing threat of a Chinese invasion aimed at the “reunification” of what Beijing sees as a renegade province. Taiwan has also lost a few more of its already dwindling official diplomatic allies this year, though its unofficial relationships with several countries—chief among them the United States—have gotten stronger.

Through it all, Din Tai Fung’s soft dumplings serve as perhaps the most potent instruments of the island’s soft power, as much a symbol of Taiwan as the advanced semiconductor chips made by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). “People are very proud of Din Tai Fung,” said Kao, “because it is the first international brand that represents Taiwanese food.”

Employees make dumplings at a Din Tai Fung in Shanghai on Nov. 27, 2014.Reuters

Ravi Agrawal, our editor-in-chief and my dining companion at the New York restaurant during its launch this summer, proudly shared that he had eaten at DTF in six different cities—Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Los Angeles, and now New York. Lili Pike, our China reporter, bragged (justifiably) that she had dined at the DTF in its home city of Taipei.

Fellow diners in New York had similar stories of their own. Luis Luy, visiting from South America, was also checking his sixth DTF off his list and rode away on his bicycle with two large takeout bags hanging from the handlebars. Eunisse San Juan and her husband, Marcus, were regulars at DTF in the Philippines, where they grew up, and had been eagerly waiting for the New York opening ever since they moved to the city. Eunisse even signed up for the DTF newsletter so she wouldn’t miss the first batch of reservations. The food, she said, “feels like home.” Some were driven by curiosity rather than nostalgia, however—Mark and Kelly, two teachers from Long Island, said they had never heard of it before but made a reservation after seeing videos about the New York launch on TikTok.

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My own induction to the Din Tai Fung universe happened a decade ago in Hong Kong, as a young reporter in a new city desperately in search of comfort food. Not far from the Kowloon waterfront overlooking the city’s iconic skyline, that branch also happens to be the only one to receive the coveted Michelin star. (That’s my own clutching-at-straws humblebrag.) In a city where dumplings are a dime a dozen, it quickly made its way to the top of my recommendation list for anyone visiting and I ate there more often than I care to admit during my two and a half years as a Hong Kong resident.

How strongly the restaurant chain’s international patrons associate it directly with Taiwan remains an open question. When I asked Luy, the DTF veteran, how he would describe the food, he thought for a few seconds before settling on “Cantonese.” I confess it took several months and several visits in Hong Kong for me to realize the Taiwan connection myself, and even Google Maps refers to the Manhattan location as simply a “Chinese restaurant.”

To Kao, however, that simply reflects the assimilation that has defined Taiwan’s culture and cuisine for decades. “Back in the days when the KMT government still emphasized the authority and authenticity of Taiwan as the real China, they often said that Taiwanese cuisine was just one of the Chinese regional cuisines,” she said, referring to the Kuomintang party that fled to Taiwan after the Chinese civil war in 1949 and long considered itself the rightful global representative of the Chinese people. “But I think it should be the other way around—it should be Taiwanese cuisine on the top and then you get an umbrella under Taiwanese cuisine where you have different kinds of regional cuisines.”

Scenes from a meal at the New York restaurant on July 17.Rishi Iyengar/Foreign Policy

But the original xiao long bao, filled with seasoned minced pork and a thin broth, remains the undisputed star of the show. Laminated placards at each table provide patrons with a four-step visual guide on how to eat them: First, you submerge a few strands of ginger in soy sauce and vinegar in the small dish at each place setting (“We recommend a 1:3 ratio of soy sauce to vinegar”). Then, you dip the xiao long bao in that concoction and place it in your soup spoon. Third, use your chopstick to poke a hole in the side of the dumpling and let the broth spill out into the spoon. Finally, drop a couple of pieces of ginger onto the spoon before popping the whole thing in your mouth in one go. Getting the soup into the dumplings while still maintaining their silken, delicate outer casing is no mean feat—and it is this balance that sets Din Tai Fung apart from its competitors.

The restaurant itself, while vast and impressive, isn’t overly opulent. The staff is pleasant but businesslike, and you order—like many other dim sum restaurants—by ticking the items you want on a paper list that looks more like an immigration form than a restaurant menu. The food arrives mere minutes after that list is carried off into the kitchen, and the subliminal message is clear: Come, sit, eat—and get going.

That assembly line ethos—much like the semiconductor chips Taiwan is also famous for—makes for a comfortingly consistent meal. Whether you’re in Taipei, Tokyo, Sydney, or New York, you know exactly what to expect when you walk into a Din Tai Fung, and you’re rarely disappointed.

Another sign of the times is visible on Din Tai Fung’s list of upcoming locations—“coming soon” is a restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona, not far from where TSMC is investing $40 billion in three new semiconductor manufacturing plants.

And while Taiwan’s government doesn’t play an active role in determining how, when, and where DTF expands, it is well aware of its value proposition. Earlier this year, towards the end of my interview with Alexander Tah-ray Yui, Taiwan’s representative and de facto ambassador in Washington, I mentioned I was headed to New York to visit the new restaurant. His face lit up.

“When I talk to many U.S. politicians and other people, especially those who have been to Taiwan, they say: ‘There’s something you have to do,’” he said. “And I go: ‘OK, yeah, what’s this important message?’ and they say, ‘Bring Din Tai Fung to D.C.’”

Naturally, I told him I concur.