Din Tai Fung Dumpling House

Technically, Din Tai Fung isn't a dim sum place. Dim sum is Cantonese, and Din Tai Fung is a branch of a Shanghai-style dumpling place in Taiwan. But as it enters its fifth year in Arcadia, people are still crowding in for those dumplings. Simple and spacious, with smart-looking woodwork and a measure of flair, it feels like a modern, Hong Kong-style café.

At Din Tai Fung, it's all about the dough. The restaurant uses a proprietary blend of flours for its wrappers, which are beautifully thin yet resilient.

A few fortunate diners will be able to get an order of the restaurant's trademark dish: No. 56, small dumplings in soup. They are literally full of broth -- they look like tiny quivering water balloons, and they're served in soup because they'd barely survive sitting on a plate. You gently tease your soup spoon under one of them, lift it to your lips and gnaw a little hole; the sweet-savory pork broth spurts into your mouth. After you've drained it dry, you pick the dumpling up with chopsticks and dip it in soy sauce in the usual way.

These dumplings are only available on weekends, and even then there are only 30 or 40 orders a day. If they're out of No. 56, console yourself with No. 50, the regular juicy pork dumplings: larger, less delicate, with less broth, but still exquisite, and available all the time.

In fact, all the dumplings are outstanding, with lean, delicate fillings and sheer wrappers crimped into elegant swirls. Through a window into the kitchen, you can watch a sort of assembly line of chefs making them.