Din Tai Fung Announces Opening Date for First New York Location

Two years after Din Tai Fung announced it was expanding to New York, the Taiwanese restaurant chain finally has an opening date. The new location — Din Tai Fung’s first on the East Coast — opens on July 11, according to a spokesperson for the company. A grand opening celebration is planned for July 18.

The New York location will be the biggest Din Tai Fung in the world. Customers enter the space through a glass cube at 1633 Broadway, between West 50th and 51st streets, and descend into a 26,400-square-foot dining room that can seat 450 people. The centerpiece of the space is a fluorescent open kitchen visible behind a glass wall, where a team of chefs will produce over 10,000 dumplings a day.

Din Tai Fung will be reservation-only when it opens this month, similar to a new location at the Downtown Disney resort in Anaheim, California. The restaurant will serve a limited menu during its first week — July 11 to 17 — with the full menu available starting on July 18. Reservations open on Yelp on July 2.

According to its website, Din Tai Fung was started as a cooking oil shop in Taipei in 1958 by the late Yang Bing-Yi and his wife Lai Pen-Mei. The restaurant’s signature soup dumplings, known for having exactly 18 folds, were introduced in 1972 when the business became a full-service restaurant.

The American stores are run by third-generation owners Aaron and Albert Yang, who have helped expand the brand to 15 locations in the country. “The more high-profile, the more high-foot-traffic locations there are, the more we’re able to share our food and culture,” Albert Yang said last year. The brothers, who were raised in Los Angeles, have made several changes to the restaurant, like adding online waitlists and reservations.

Din Tai Fung has over 170 locations between Taiwan, China, and 13 other countries. The first American location opened in Arcadia, California, in 2000.