This is one of the most memorable and best value dishes I ate while briefly in Sydney – the $6.80 Tofu with pork floss and 1,000 year old eggs – at Din Tai Fung at World Square. I think it was even better than the Shao-long bao, which has become so fashionable at Yum Cha nowadays.
I was eating with Shelley from SBS Food who was far more adept at eating these punchy little bags of flavour, using a technique that ensures that they didn’t burst down her front. Having only been introduced to these fashionable little soup-filled scrotums this year, I use the extreme and risky eating technique of shoving them in my gob. I just hope that one day I will learnt that this is a fast track to stained cloths and a burnt tongue.
Shelly, however wasn’t into the tofu dish. And I can see why. The floss looks like the result of shaving a brown jumper with a Remington Fuzz-Away. But I fell for the wobbly cold smooth tofu, the temperature itself providing a contrast to the woolly pork-flavoured floss and the black eggs.
The shame was the nut-like testical of pork that rattled inside the above buns.
Nevertheless, the value was terrific and I would return again. I’m going to submit this to Very Cheap Eats as the total cost for lunch for two with tea was $45.80.
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Ha. I have something against pork floss. It’s more like pork fairy-floss. As with the technique to eating xiao long bao, pick it up with chopsticks, sit in a spoon, nibble a hole, suck up the broth and then proceed to eat like a regular dumperin’.
What else was in the scrotum?
That’s what Shelley was doing. If I remember – and boy what have I eaten since – it was pork and prawn.
ohhh! YUM! Always taken Din Tai Fung for granted In Singapore. I miss those little xiao long bao! Have you been to Hutong in Melbourne?
I am salivating at those 1,000 year old eggs! The floss and the tofu, too, but mainly the eggs. MmMmmmmMMM! My office is in World Square (well, beside it), i so could eat at DTF every day. Am, uh, gob-smacked that someone would be so daring as to shove the whole soupy-filled sack into his mouth! Daredevil!
I was in Singapore just last week and ate there at least 3 times, could not resist the soupy goodness! They were running a special on chili crab Xiaolongbao – not as good as the regular dumplings but still a treat.
Ed, any idea if they have plans to open in Melbourne?
So scrotums were the first thing that came to mind, eh?
Now, the next time I have them it’ll be all I think about. Lovely!
Not, the first thing that came into mind but I’ve never seen flesh coloured money bags before. Sorry to have ruined your yum cha.