September 30, 2024 Issue

My fascination with the two versions of Helen Rosner’s "Tables for Two" column continues. This week, she reviews the Taiwanese restaurant chain Din Tai Fung’s first New York location. The print version of her piece contains this wonderful description:

Runners zip and zag among the tables, bearing teetering stacks of bamboo steamer trays, including dessert dumplings filled, not unappealingly, with chocolate ganache, or smooth, warm, sweet black sesame paste. The grid of tables and their identical accent lamps recede into the distance with mathematical regularity, the lighting somehow both overdim and overbright. Din Tai Fung is a machine, but a notably delicious one.

I love the imagery – “Runners zip and zag among the tables, bearing teetering stacks of bamboo steamer trays”; “The grid of tables and their identical accent lamps recede into the distance with mathematical regularity, the lighting somehow both overdim and overbright.” I can’t imagine how it could be improved. Then I read the digital version on newyorker.com, and voilà! It’s even more vivid:

Runners zip and zag among the tables, bearing teetering stacks of bamboo steamer trays, shedding the vertical layers table by table. Servers swing by to ask if you’re interested in some boba tea (they make it in-house), or a cocktail (see that enormous U-shaped bar all the way over there?), or another round of cucumbers, or maybe some dessert—dumplings, naturally, filled not unappealingly with chocolate ganache, or smooth, warm, sweet black-sesame paste. Time flows quickly, and also slowly; the walls are black, and far away; there are no windows. The transparent walls of the kitchen echo the uncanny fishbowl effect of the street-level entrance far above. The grid of tables and their identical accent lamps recede into the distance with mathematical regularity, the lighting somehow both overdim and overbright. More than once, I was struck with the disorienting feeling that I was hovering at the edge of the void. You could be deep below the streets of midtown Manhattan, or you could be on the ninth floor of a casino in Vegas, or you could be on a space station, or in Taipei, or in a shockingly real-feeling, slightly uncanny, notably delicious dream.

So many additional delectable details! Rosner’s enhancement of the first sentence with “shedding the vertical layers table by table” is inspired. To fully appreciate the beauty of her writing, I recommend reading (and comparing) both versions.