At the mention of Yungkang Street, it's hard not to think of Din Tai Fung, partly because of its prominent position near the entrance to the street, and partly because its soup dumplings are known far and wide. There's always a crowd--usually Japanese tourists--packing the path in front of the restaurant, and both this and the restaurant itself have become known as sights iconic of Taipei.

Din Tai Fung was established by Yang Ping-yi, born in 1927 in Shanxi, China. While still young he was forced to flee to Taiwan in 1949 due to the civil war. Back then there was a store on Chungching South Road called Heng Tai Fung, run by a Shanghainese man, which specialized in legume and sesame oils for cooking. Yang found himself lucky enough to land a job as a delivery boy for this particular store.

In 1958 Yang set up his own oil shop, and in homage to his former boss, he called his store Din Tai Fung. Din Tai Fung moved to its current location near Yungkang Street in 1972, where it faced tough competition from other salad oil vendors. However, the traditional oil business was already dying off, so to keep business going, Yang decided to put the connections he'd made in the restaurant industry to use, transforming Din Tai Fung into a restaurant specializing in Shanghainese food.

There was already a well-known Shanghainese eatery nearby called Kao-chi, so to stake out his own claim Yang invested a huge amount of thought and effort into improving his dishes. One such example is the restaurant's xiaolongbao--steamed soup dumplings. Traditionally such dumplings are big, greasy, and can easily be quite off-putting. To help sort this out, Yang kept the dumplings to only ten per serving, with each dumpling's skin pleated 18 times, and experimented with different proportions of meat, juice, and soup, hoping to strike on a combination that would alleviate customers' concerns about greasiness.

Yang Ping-yi's hard work helped the restaurant quickly build a name for itself. In 1993, the New York Times rated Din Tai Fung amongst the world's top ten restaurants. And the Japanese media started getting behind the restaurant in a big way, so much so that now a full third of their customers come from the Land of the Rising Sun. 1996 saw Din Tai Fung open their first Japanese branch in cooperation with Takashimaya Group, igniting a lasting craze for soup dumplings.

On top of their two Taiwan locations, as of 2006 Din Tai Fung also has 11 restaurants in Japan, as well as ones in the US, South Korea, and Singapore. And in 2001 this once little Shanghainese food store finally made the trip "home," with a Shanghai branch becoming what was to be the first of six Chinese branches.

Meanwhile, back at the original Yungkang Street location, waiting outside for upward of half an hour before getting in is far from uncommon. The process is handled by computer, with people being handed out numbers and waiting as at a bank; once seated, each table has only 40 minutes to complete their meal. All this just goes to show the transformation Din Tai Fung has undergone, from small oil shop to massive international culinary phenomenon.

Many more impatient epicures can't help but bemoan the changing of the times, waxing nostalgic over the days when dining at Din Tai Fung was a simpler affair. But the tale of the restaurant and its owner--his escape to Taiwan, going from the oil market to the restaurant business, then taking that to the world and to his old homeland--will long be remembered, and is a fitting entree to the small, bustling, and widely renowned Yungkang Street.

Chefs in Din Tai Fung's steam-filled kitchen busy making xiaolongbao. On a good day, they can sell over 1,000 steamers of the meat-filled dumplings. Din Tai Fung is one of the more famous restaurants on Yungkang Street.