TAIPEI - Two mother ships

Of course no visit to TPE is complete without a visit to the Din Tai Fung mother ship on Xinyi Road. We went out on Saturday night, it was raining hard, and it was a 50 minute wait.  Worth every minute and worth every dollar for the truffle xiaolungbao!  Served with separate spoon and dish and instructions (cleanse palate first with tea, and no dipping sauce!).

notice the digital clock indicating the wait for a table...

(DTF photos by John Ngai)

The next day (after museum trip) we had lunch at Ban Mu Yuan, my favorite neighborhood joint one block from my aunt's house.  We've been coming here for years, my dad used to each lunch here back in the 1980s when he spent time in Taipei consulting.  There is a refrigerator case with little appetizers plates, called "small veggies" (xiao cai), and you just take the ones you want (here, eggplant, tofu-gan, green beans, and cucumber salad).

Below is the table in process of demolition.  Notice the beef noodle soup and meat pies (xien bing), plus dumplings, which just arrived.

Ban Mu Yuan now has mother ship status because my brother picked up their business card on the 

way out.  It lists their USA locations, two in California (Cupertino and Irvine) and two in the DC area--Rockville MD and Annandale VA. No names, just the towns. But we know!  All Chinese (as well as discerning non-Chinese) within 100 miles of DC know these refer to A&J, the Taiwan restaurants that bring that little bit of home cooking to the nation's capital district.  Further research online indicates there are branches in Beijing and Toronto.  Another Taiwan restaurant empire in the making!