Let’s walk through a typical day of eating for me in Nanjing.

Breakfast starts at 5am² and is usually at a xiao chi dian which is kind of like a dim sum stand with road-side aluminum furniture. Sketchy? Yes, a little. Delicious? Definitely. Luckily, I’m not someone with a sensitive stomach and I have never gotten sick from eating in China.

In the last four days, I’ve had quite a variety of breakfast items: plain steamed buns (man tou), veggie or pork-filling steamed buns (bao zi), glutinous rice buns (shao mai), fried dough sticks (you tiao), soy milk or tofu soup (dou jiang, dou nao), congee (xi fan).

Some xiao chi items can be repeated for lunch, such as steamed buns. Nanjing has the best xiao long bao in the country, many would argue.

Another Nanjing delicacy is yian shui ya (salted duck). Salted duck in Canada cannot compare, mostly because the duck used in Canada is factory-farmed, whereas the duck here are raised naturally, and therefore contains hardly any fat at all.

Although not a Nanjing specialty, I also got to try pumpkin congee, which tasted truly delicious and is certainly something that could be made in Canada, what with our abundance of pumpkin.

Dinner can range from anything, as far as entrees go. I’ve had clay-roasted free-range³ chicken, sweet and sour fish, five mushroom soup, wintermelon and egg stir-fry, five spices beef, spicy freshwater lobster, and so on. Last night, however, I had hot pot. Hot pot in 37-degree weather? I thought it was a joke, but apparently not.

I was taken to the best lamb hot pot in Nanjing. Lamb hot pot is not a Nanjing specialty, so this was as good as you were going to get in this city. I don’t like lamb and I’m not preferential to hotpot either, but last night’s dinner was damn good. Usually, I refuse to touch lamb unless it’s completely covered in spices, to eat lamb that’s only been boiled in water is unthinkable. But last night’s lamb did not have a gamey smell/taste, and tasted great with some spicy oil and sesame paste.

I am trying a lot of new foods that I used to refuse to eat as a child. Even my uncle commented how I was much better about eating new things; until now, I’ve been rather infamous in my family for my picky eating habits.
Perhaps it’s because our palate changes as we grow. But mostly, I think it’s a psychological change. Whereas I used to feel that I was not missing anything by refusing to eat certain foods, I now feel the exact opposite. It seems such a waste to go to a city and not try the local cuisine. Some things take a little getting used to, but in the end, I believe cultural adaptation is definitely worthwhile!

1. When I say ‘everything’, I’m mostly referring to all Chinese food.
2. Everyone gets up really early here because mid-day and early afternoon is too hot to function, so that’s usually nap-time.
3. Although what poultry isn’t free-range here?

Pai gu may have been my favourite dish at home as a child, but xiao long bao were hands down my favourite thing to order when we were eating out. I grew up in Nanjing, which is not far from Shanghai and certainly influenced by Shanghai cuisine. We always went out to eat steamed buns (filled and unfilled) and steamed dumplings because they were cheap and extremely time-consuming to make at home (there were no such things as frozen buns and dumplings in those days so we’d have to make it from scratch). Not to mention, I spent a summer in Shanghai with my grandparents and I made sure to eat enough xiao long bao to last me until the next time I returned to China.
There is an art to eating xiao long bao, one that I don’t care to exercise unless I’m in China. What is this art and why don’t I exercise it? The proper way to eat xiao long bao is to gently lift it out of the long zi (bamboo basket), dip it in vinegar (optional – but if you are a native of the JiangSu province, you will not skip the vinegar), and eat it in one bite so that no soup leaks out. The xiao long bao wrapper is very thin and delicate, and it sticks to surfaces, so it’s easy to break if you set it down. And letting the soup leak out is a blasphemy for all Chinese, so be sure the xiao long bao goes straight from the basket to your mouth if you are eating with “real Chinese.”
The reason I tend not to follow this technique when I eat is because the soup is so hot that I’ll often burn my mouth if I eat the xiao long bao in one bite. However, I am not going to let the soup leak out either, so I’ll put the xiao long bao down in a small bowl or on a soup soon, and then I bite a small hole in the wrapper and suck out the soup before I eat the xiao long bao. Still tastes delicious!

But I digress. My friend and I arrived at 11pm and Ding Tai Fung was already quite busy. When we were seated, we realized with horror that the entire menu was Chinese. My friend could not read any Chinese, and I can only read some. Luckily, my knowledge of Chinese was enough for us to navigate through most of the dim sum items.
Either we were lucky or everything at Ding Tai Fung tastes delicious because everything that came to our table tasted amazing. I’ve never tasted such simple yet perfect Chinese dim sum before, especially because many Chinese restaurants don’t think dim sum is important¹. It’s like how lunch entrees are often not as good as dinner entrees except that dim sum is a completely different menu (and world) of its own.

Ding Tai Fung obviously did not subscribe to this philosophy, and quite rightly, its dim sum is what made it famous.

The first item was a leng cai (literally, cold dish, i.e. appetizer) of spicy beef tripe. It was cold and spicy and a little bit sweet – simply delicious.

The second item was the basket of xiao long bao. The authenticity of xiao long bao is easily determinable. If the wrapper is thick, it is not authentic. If there is no soup or very little soup, it is not authentic. Shanghai xiao long bao is also always a pork filling with pork soup, so any other ingredients in the filling would make it not authentic. This was authentic in every way. As I bit into the thin wrap, hot, savoury soup spilled out and burned my tongue, but I ate it all in one bite. My mouth came alive with the sensation of rich pork juices, and my mind sent me back to my summer in Shanghai, where I spent many hot afternoons on the air-conditioned second floor of a tea house, eating basket after basket of xiao long bao.

The third item to arrive was the vegetable spring rolls. They were crisp and golden, and quite perfect. I’ve never had spring rolls in a restaurant before in China, so I don’t know if these were authentic, but they tasted pretty good. The filling was vegetarian, I think bok choy or Chinese cabbage.

The fourth item was by far the most delicious. It was a beef roll wrapped in aluminum foil that I’ve seen other people order many times, but I’ve never seen it in China or had it myself. It may be a Cantonese dim sum item. Either way, it was delicious. It was a pan-fried crispy roll, with sliced beef and scallions wrapped inside with Hoi Sin sauce.

On subsequent trips to Ding Tai Fung, I have tried their vegetable jiao zi, which are filled with Chinese greens and shredded Chinese vermicelli and steamed in a paper-thin translucent dumpling wrap. Dan dan noodles are not their forte, nor are luo bo si su bing (pan-fried shredded turnip pancake), although it is slightly less soggy than what I’ve had at other places. Mini (bite-size) xiao long bao are not nearly as good as the standard xiao long bao, and pork and glutinous rice shao mai leave something to be desired. Crispy spring onion pancakes are a good standby, as are stir-fried rice cakes (Shanghai nian gao).

For dessert, their sugar egg puff tastes like nothing with confectioner’s sugar sprinkled on top. I don’t have a picture, but here is what a sugar egg puff looks like. The most interesting dessert they offer is the steamed red bean rice cake. It is not too sweet or decadent, but fragrant and beautiful.

The servers speak Mandarin, Cantonese, and English, and the food arrives quite quickly considering everything is made fresh. Service can be slower on weekends, but while you wait, you can watch the cute dumpling makers behind the glass pleat dumplings with practiced confidence. The washrooms are a little cramped but fairly clean. Prices were standard for dim sum, between $5 to $9 dollars a dish.

Rating:
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1. They won’t have the head chef prepare those items, and some places will even buy pre-made or frozen dim sum and just heat it up