Restaurant Review

Leisure World residents are welcome to submit reviews of their favorite restaurants. Include your name, and Mutual and telephone numbers. Make sure the restaurant’s full name, telephone number, address and operating hours are provided. People may submit takeout menus with the information. The reviews are subject to editing and will run as space allows. Email them to emmad@lwsb.com. For more information, call 562-431-6586, ext. 387.

Din Tai Fung 3333 Bristol St. Costa Mesa, CA, 92626 714-549-3388

by Dorothy Ferrington

LW contributor

Warmup Wednesday in our household is the day Ray and I warm up leftovers from the restaurants we visit. We recently visited Din Tai Fung, a dim sum restaurant at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. It was delicious and is the focus of a YouTube video I made to showcase it.

Dim sum is a Chinese tradition of eating snacks. In ancient China, as travelers journeyed along the Silk Road, they stopped by tea houses to rest. Along with the tea, chefs created and served small pieces of food and the tradition of dim sum began.

Our first experience with dim sum was in Chinatown in San Francisco. Clang, clang, clang was the sound of the dim sum carts as they moved up and down aisles of cafeteria-grouped tables, where people shared seating with other patrons.

Servers stopped at every table to offer their treats, shrimp and pork dumplings, pork xiao, long bao, shrimp and pork shao mai, shrimp and pork potstickers and pork and mushroom buns, to name a few. There are over 1,000 dim sum dishes in existence today.

As the carts passed your table with their inviting aromas, you have to be quick in making selections. Yes? No? Then the carts were gone, on to the next table.

Din Tai Fung is different. No aromas, no clanging carts from which to make a selection. We ordered off a menu that was written in Chinese. Lucky for us, the menu showed pictures of the menu items, along with an English description. Everything was delicious.

To learn more about this great restaurant and the Leisure World Kitchen Warm Up Wednesdays, visit youtube.com and search R& DVideoProductions6276 (click on dark green clapperboard icon) that should appear at the top of the results.

Dorothy Ferrington is a member of Creative Writers’ Club, and Ray Geierman and Dorothy Ferrington are members of Video Producers Club.