Ding Tele (Kovan)

Atas black sesame paste that's grainy. But the bun was like frozen bun.

Very poor. Another place trying to imitate Ding Tai Fung's fried rice.

Aka 生煎包. Still the best thing here. Addictive base and tasty filling.

Worth trying are their Sheng jian baos. They have them with 1) shrimp and pork and 2) pork only. Both are delicious with sweet gravy from the fillings.

The other fried and steam dumplings are quite average. The xiao long bao skin is thicker and hardens easily as they cool. The fried egg rice is also on the drier side and lacks moist and flavor.

It’s our first time trying 生煎包, which is also referred to by some as the ‘fried and crispy 小笼包’.

Take note to bite into it slowly and enjoy the hot flavourful broth oozing out from the inside. The twisted top of the bao is pan-fried to golden brown, tasting deliciously crispy in contrast to the soft minced pork meat filling! We love such simple Chinese food and this item is something we would reorder the next time we revisit.

The hallmarks of a good sheng jian bao, to me, is a soft, fluffy, relatively thin and slightly elastic wrapper with a beautifully golden and crunchy bottom + characteristically xlb-like juices bursting right out on the first bite. I’ve heard a lot about Ding Tele’s sheng jian baos so I was super excited to try em — especially since I wasn’t gonna get my fix overseas anytime soon. They were indeed tasty and really not too shabby, buuuuut I was a wee disappointed tbh. Don’t get me wrong: super tasty mince they nailed; crisp pan-fried bottoms a big thumbs up; shiok bursting juices also a yay. What I found lacking was their technique in sealing the little baos. See that disproportionate amount of dough at the base? If you zoom in you’d notice that the mass of dough’s quite dry in the middle, while the rest of the bao dough’s rather silky smooth and hydrated.