Founder of popular Din Tai Fung restaurant chain dies at 96

Bing-Yi Yang, the founder of restaurant chain Din Tai Fung, which helped popularize xiao long bao dumplings around the world, has died at the age of 96.

Since it was launched in 1958, initially as a cooking oil shop in Taiwan by Yang and his wife, Lai Pen-Mai, the business has opened more than 170 restaurants in countries like the U.S., Japan, Australia, the UAE and the United Kingdom, drawing rave reviews from critics and prompting foodies to wait in long lines for a taste of its signature soup dumplings.

In a statement, Yang’s family said the founder died peacefully and asked for privacy as they arranged the funeral, Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported. No further details were provided.

Din Tai Fung opened its first U.S. location in 2000 in Arcadia.

Xiao long bao dumplings “were already popular here when Din Tai Fung opened in Arcadia a dozen years ago,” Times food critic Jonathan Gold wrote in 2013, “but even the doubters had to admit that the restaurant raised the dumplings to another level.”

The restaurant’s success was not guaranteed nor was it likely in Yang’s business plan; selling dumplings was a Plan B, according to the company’s website.

Yang was born in China in 1927. He immigrated to Taiwan at 20 years old, amid China’s Civil War, with “20 dollars in his pocket,” according to the franchise’s U.S. website.

Yang found work at a shop that sold cooking oil where he met his wife. The pair eventually opened their own storefront, which began to struggle in the 1970s when cooking oil became more accessible in supermarkets.

At the suggestion of a restaurant owner and friend, the couple began selling steamed dumplings that eventually became so popular the couple turned their shop into a full-time restaurant.

In 1993, the New York Times selected the shop as one of the top 10 restaurants in the world.

By 1999, the restaurant had opened several locations in Japan before it launched its first U.S. eatery in the San Gabriel Valley to immediate popularity.

”… [This] 6-month-old restaurant, housed in an Arcadia mini-mall, would seem to define dumpling frenzy,” Times critic S. Irene Virbila wrote in her review published in September 2000. “On a day so hot the asphalt outside seems about to melt, a line snakes out the door.”

The restaurant is now located in the Westfeild Santa Anita mall, where long lines of dumpling fans form daily.

The good reviews kept pouring in more than a decade later with Gold in 2013 calling the xiao long bao “small miracles.”

“When you pop one into your mouth, perhaps having wetted it first with a drop of black vinegar, it bursts into a mouthful of broth — boiling liquid if you haven’t allowed it to cool — transforming the filling of meat and aromatics into a loose, savory purée that melts away like pork-scented air,” Gold wrote.