The Northwest's very first Din Tai Fung debuted in 2010 with extreme fanfare (and extreme lines) and soup dumplings aplenty at Lincoln Square in Bellevue. Today, it reopens in a larger, showier location in the tower’s ground floor. These are dumplings that deserve street-level access.

The new Din Tai Fung is twice the size of the original and ratchets up the design factor by about a million. The location upstairs had an interior pulled from the “forgettably pleasant” school of architecture. Its evolution involves a high-drama design: a suspended tree installation over the dining room, red-walled private dining rooms with washi paper chandeliers, and a general sense of drama that suits a prominent restaurant space in downtown Bellevue.

One design element remains constant—Din Tai Fung’s “immersive dumpling expo kitchen,” a.k.a the open room where you can watch well-trained chefs shape its signature xiao long bao soup dumplings with their nimble fingers.

Din Tai Fung took over the former Maggiano’s space at 10455 NE Eighth Street, at the northeast corner of Northeast Eighth Street and Bellevue Way. The Taiwanese-based chain dates back to the 1970s, but has become a phenomenon across Asia and North America (New York City is about to get its first location). Its popularity is driven by those perfectly proportioned xiao long bao, dumplings that contain a burst of broth inside, along with the filling.

Since its heady arrival, Din Tai Fung has planted a few other flags in our region. Today you can find a location in a few of the region’s major shopping centers, from University Village and Pacific Place down to Southcenter in Tukwila. And yet they're reliably crowded.

The previous Din Tai Fung space won't be empty for long; the Puget Sound Business Journal says an all-you-can-eat wagyu hot pot and Japanese barbecue spot called Wagyu House will move in by the end of the year—complete with food conveyor belts and robot servers.