Silicon Valley finally gets popular dumpling restaurant

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The world's most popular Chinese dumpling restaurant is finally coming to Silicon Valley, after years of waiting.

Din Tai Fung is a Taiwanese dumpling restaurant that has a cult following worldwide with more than 113 outlets, mostly in Asia.

Founded in 1958, it specializes in a kind of steamed dumpling originally from Shanghai called xiao long bao (小籠包), which literally means "little basket dumplings."

The savory morsels traditionally contain minced pork in a rich broth that melts when they're cooked for a precise four minutes in bamboo steamers.

The diner puts the plump dumpling into a spoon, pokes it with a chopstick, slurps up the broth and then eats the dumpling with its luscious filling.

Xiao long bao (shao long bao) are also sometimes called Shanghai dumplings or soup dumplings.

Since it first opened in Taipei in 1972, Din Tai Fung has expanded internationally and now has restaurants across Asia.

In the United States, there are outlets in the Los Angeles and Seattle areas.

With one of the nation's largest concentrations of Chinese-Americans, Silicon Valley has long wondered when it would get its own Din Tai Fung.

The wait will finally be over by the end of the year, when a 200-seat Din Tai Fung restaurant is scheduled to open in San Jose's Westfield Valley Fair mall.