I know DTF came up and was/is most well known for their dumplings and soup dumplings. Have you tried the various noodle dishes and how do they stack up? Favorites? One of these days I’ll venture out at lunchtime and bring back some lunch to the office. Curious what I should start with…
I can’t speak specifically of noodles at DTF but I’ve found generally that Asian noodles don’t reheat extremely well. Why not eat there?
We did have these at U-District place and I think they’d reheat well…but they’re dumplings.
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The fried noodle dishes look better than they taste. Much better at the DTF in HKG or TW, but that’s to be expected. The cold noodles aren’t too bad though. I stick to the vegetable/pork wontons in spicy sauce as their sauce is still great and usually give you more than necessary so you can use it on future dishes.
Because I don’t have a long enough lunch hour.
How spicy, on a scale of 1-10? I personally don’t love spice, and if it was spicier than a 3-4, it would be too much for me. Thanks!
How about dinner or weekends?
It depends on the day. Some days a 3- 4 others a 4-5. I wouldn’t call it a bad spicy either, so you can recover from it fairly quickly and it won’t ruin your meal even if you don’t like spicy. The sauce is separate if you order to go. I’d suggest tasting it first in its own bowl and then adding only a little bit or adding some vinegar to help balance it.
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This is not an observation of the DTF Bellevue location but rather the HK location. I thought the dumplings were great, the noodles were good and enjoyable, but not quite reaching the level of the dumplings.
I appreciate that, but you’re on the PNW board. My lunch hour certainly isn’t long enough to travel to Hong Kong and back 
Unrelated. DTF Bellevue came close to getting shut down with 85 critical food safety violations. (90 gets shut down)
Hah. I’m surprised they weren’t shutdown. One look at the staff there and you’ll see that apathy is rampant. Pretty funny that they haven’t cracked down on obvious rule violations occurring in the dumpling viewing room. Not that I mind, but rules are rules. More reason to head to Facing East now?
Totally off-topic but did you see this about Facing East???
That’s not surprising either. Pretty funny how obvious it was if the allegations/evidence is true. Low % of cash transactions in an Asian restaurant and cash tips being higher than cash sales on a given day. Sounds like she would be doing the other restaurants a favor by outing this “software” as it’s terribly written. I wonder what percentage of restaurants that don’t take AMEX also avoid paying taxes. Thanks for the article, catholiver.
Maybe she was “beta testing”
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very interesting
It is, isn’t it? And she’s like, oh, okay, I’ll pay it all back.
I’m not sure what to make of this:
She also told investigators the cash removed from the register was used
to pay kitchen staff under the table because they preferred to be paid
that way, the complaint said. She told state investigators that she was
worried she would be “in trouble in the community for sharing how the
software worked because so many restaurants use it,”
I wonder if she offered workers a better wage if they took cash as an incentive to help launder it, or if they didn’t necessarily have the documents to get a bank account. Now are all the employees going to get audited too?
That she’s worried other restaurateurs will be pissed at her for telling is kind of funny though.
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I’m not actually sure this would stop me from going for soup dumplings. I mean, the walk-in was probably just warm temporarily because of some cooling stock, right? And permits don’t really count 
Seems like there is such fast turnover (at least with the dumplings) that food isn’t staying anywhere for long. Hmm, they actually have along history of poor inspection scores http://info.kingcounty.gov/health/ehs/foodsafety/inspections/Results.aspx?Output=W&Business_Name=din%20tai%20fung&Business_Address=&Longitude=&Latitude=&City=bellevue&Zip_Code=&Inspection_Type=All&Inspection_Start=&Inspection_End=&Inspection_Closed_Business=A&Violation_Points=&Violation_Red_Points=&Violation_Descr=&Fuzzy_Search=N&Sort=B
I wonder if it’s one of those things where the inspector is freaking out about the tubs of filling out in the dumpling room and the paper towels are low, or if they are really taking risks. At least they didn’t find any mice 
I have the same opinion as you. I’ve eaten at that one and saw nothing untoward. Off-topic, now that there’s one in the U-District we ate there last year. Equally good.
Yes. One has to take a lot of the violations with a grain of salt, but when you are bordering on the edge of closing shop as a chain restaurant then something seems off. I agree that the numerous times I have been there the only thing that seemed off was the dumpling preparing room and even then it was off for an inspector not for truly affecting the food quality. I haven’t been in some time, but it would take more than these reports to stop me from returning.
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