Takeout from Din Tai Fung, Bellevue

When I travel for work, I often get exhausted with dining out, and I'm usually crazy busy actually doing my job.  By the time dinner rolls around, I just want to do something easy, solo, ideally back at my hotel, and then get back to work.  Did you think all my business travel was ... glamorous?

If I have a hotel with any sort of facilities for preparing food, I'll just go to the grocery store, particularly when I find a high quality one nearby.  Or I opt for a lot of takeout, poke being a recent highlight for me, as you've read about frequently.  But another fun one for me is takeout from Din Tai Fung, when there happens to be a location near me, like in Costa Mesa or Sydney.

I've still never visited a Din Tai Fung to dine in (seriously, 2 hours waits all the time!), and I don't live near one, so I've never been able to go with a group, which is how it makes the most sense, since everything is served family style, in large portions.  But the takeout experience is done well, and I continue to work my way, slowly, through the menu that way.

This particular visit was in Bellevue, WA, in a mall location adjacent to the hotel I was staying at.

Takeout Sesame Noodles.

I decided to try something that sounded almost similar to the spicy wontons I enjoyed so much before, this time, noodles with a sesame sauce.

It was a mixed success.

Full House!

As is normal at any Din Tai Fung, the place was packed, there were massive queues of people waiting out front, and the wait time was quoted in hours.

I was glad I had just ordered online, and planned to jet out of there as quickly as possible.

Signature Takeout Bag.

I got my takeout intending to eat it basically immediately, and didn't really need the signature Din Tai Fung bag, but, I did feel like I had a bit of a prize as I walked past all the crowds of waiting people, watching their eyes track my bag.

Nicely Packaged:  N9. Noodle with Sesame Sauce. $8.50.

As with my previous takeout experience from Din Tai Fung (in Costa Mesa), I was impressed with the packaging.  They do a really good job of delivering the highest quality takeout imaginable, with each component in its own container, and the potentially leaky element in sealed plastic bag as well.

My bag contained one bowl with the noodles, one with the sauce, and a little one with the crushed sticky nuts topping.  What it didn't have?  A bowl to mix them in, I think I was supposed to just pour the sauce onto the noodles, but, what if I didn't like it? What if I wanted less sauce?

Luckily, I tried every component individually first.

Sesame Sauce.

The sauce looked great, although I'd admit, it wasn't what I was expecting from "sesame sauce".  It certainly looked spicy, and loaded with green onion.  Where was the sesame?  I was expecting something thicker, more paste like, perhaps like tahini ... I'm not sure what I was expecting, really, but it wasn't this.

But still, it looked spicy and good, particularly since I had liked the spicy sauce so much last time on the wontons.  But this ... I did not like.  I tried it alone, I tried a portion with noodles that I mixed in a paper cup I had.  It didn't matter how I had it, I didn't like it.

It was spicy, just nothing like the spicy sauce I had previously enjoyed.  The flavor, whatever it was, just wasn't one I liked.  Kinda like sriracha.  I don't like sriracha generally :(  I never tasted, nor really saw, sesame.

It really was a let down, not what I was expecting, and I'm very, very glad that it was packaged separate, and that I didn't just dump it all on the noodles first.  

Noodles.

The noodles were ... noodles?  Shockingly hot actually, I couldn't believe how hot they were, and how hot they stayed for a while.  Very, very fresh noodles.  Plain, but that is intentional, as they are only used in dishes with sauces.

Since they were packaged separately, they did clump together pretty immediately though, which made eating them a bit hard.  That said, I'm glad they were packaged separately, because ... I did not like the sauce.

I salvaged the noodles, bringing them back to my hotel, and mixed them with a different mayo based sauce I had leftover back at the hotel, along with the crushed peanut topping that came with this, and some veggies I had on hand.  My creamy pasta salad was actually quite tasty, fresh noodles worked remarkably well in it.