"They have just perfected standardization and used all the kind of rigor that you'd expect from a global fast-food chain, but applied it to something that is still handmade with very good ingredients and is a sort of premium product," says Dunlop. In 1995, the eldest of Yang and Lai's five children, their son Yang Ji-Hua, took over as head of the restaurant chain. Global expansion began in the late 1990s, and then came Michelin stars Yang later had the article engraved on bronze plaques used to decorate some of Din Tai Fung's locations. Hom wrote an ebullient article about the restaurant for the New York Times in early 1993, bringing the small outfit to international attention. It was just fantastic in its simplicity and taste," says Ken Hom, an American chef and writer who was brought to the first Din Tai Fung restaurant by fellow chef and cookbook writer, Taiwan's Fu Pei-mei, in 1992. "I couldn't believe how great the food was. Many of their first customers were former soldiers who had fled to Taiwan and who lived near the restaurant in a government settlement built for military employees and their families. Like many mainland migrants who came to Taiwan in the 1940s and 1950s, Yang was already married - but with all exchanges cut off between China and Taiwan, he was unsure if he would ever see his first wife again or be able to confirm if she was even alive.įor nearly two decades, Yang and Lai fed mostly local Taipei customers their standout soup dumplings. They dated in secret for years before marrying. In Taipei, Yang met Lai, who would become his wife. I don't understand, and I'm not knowledgeable," Yang told guests at a gastronomy event in 2007. They were part of a massive exodus of up to 2 million Chinese refugees who fled the mainland for Taiwan during the end of the Chinese civil war.įew ever went back. Yang went by boat to Taiwan at the age of 21 - as company legend has it, with only $20 in his pocket - to join his uncle, who was already on the island. After Japan's defeat in the Second World War, China's civil war engulfed his city. During his early teenage years, Japanese troops occupied his hometown for three years. The Salt Our Quest To Build A Great Global Dumpling Listīorn in 1927 in the city of Taiyuan, in China's central Shanxi province, Yang never lost his heavy provincial accent.
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