Posts Tagged ‘Chinese’
July 12, 2009 | 
Author Kam Fook Yum Cha
Level 2, Doncaster Shopping Centre
03 9005 1888
Another week, another opportunity to go to Yum Cha- I am getting extremely lucky as Hubby HATES yum cha 
This time we went to Kam Fook in Doncaster Shopping Centre. Kam Fook Doncaster is the sister restaurant of Kam Fook in Sydney, which is famous for its Dim Sums. We are lucky to sit near the kitchen, where fresh stacks of bamboo piled trolleys were being pushed out constantly.
Kam Fook certainly have some interesting dishes that rarely gets an outing in the city. There are hot soft shelled crab parading with mango sago sweet soup, chewy glutinous rice balls, briased offals, stir fry noodles that are heated up in front of guests, various dumplings such as mushroom dumplings, scallop dumplings, duck and preserved vegies dumplings. Although it has some variety, the quality is quite inconsistent.
The dumplings are either too dry (duck & preserved vegies) or too gluggy (mushroom dumplings which fell apart when picked up and stuck to the roof of my mouth), the only highlight is the prawn dumplings, which is quite fresh. The BBQ pork buns are fresh and hot, although presentation wise the BBQ Pork and sauce are leeking out of the bun.
The braised beef tendon is better than Gold Leaf, quite tender and gelatinous, however, the sauce has a burnt garlicky taste- not good…
The soft shelled crab was fantastic- it smells great, tasted great, texture is crunchy and not too oily. Highly recommended.
The sweet tofu dessert is not as good as Gold Leaf, it didn’t have that hint of ginger so it’s just plain sweet.
Kam Fook is better than the usual suspects in Chinatown, but the yum cha doesn’t really shine as much as I expected. Will have to keep looking! 7/10
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Plume
546 Doncaster Rd, Doncaster
03 9840 1122
Once again, I can safely say that Good Food Guide’s taste in Asian food is pretty average. Plume is the perfect example- it might have the “ambience” and the half-hearted attempt at service that food critics seek, but the food in Plume really lack the taste and value that is really important to me. Many of us go out to eat for a special occassion, 
and expect good, hearty food from Chinese Restaurants, sadly Plume is not the restaurant to go to.
We ordered soft shell crab- it’s not bad and it’s beautifully decorated, but $17 for 3 tiny pieces are quite pricey.
Crispy chicken is not as good- the skin should be golden, thin and crispy, but this one looks a bit too brown and the skin is more chewy than crispy. The meat itself doesn’t taste too bad though.
Spicy eggplant in a claypot is quite tasteless, it needs a bit more kick to it and it lacks the fragrance.
We also had a beef with pepper sauce- it’s not too bad but the dish is just quite tiny and with 7 of us sharing this dish, we could hardly get a decent spoonful each.
The lamb claypot is a really good dish to order in a chilly winter night, it really warms you up and get your blood pumping. Sadly lamb claypot in Plume is didn’t produce the same effect. First, the dish is not hot enough. Secondly, it needs a more prominent gingery, fermented bean curdy taste. Thirdly the lamb did not have enough flavour- it’s really a failed dish.
The five boys are still really starved after scrapping all the sauce from the dishes to go with rice (one guy had to order 5 bowls of rice cos the dishes and rice are so tiny). They decided to order the salt and pepper squid to hopefully fill their half empty bellies. Once again, a disappointingly small dish was dropped off at our
table. The batter is just not up to scratch for a Good Food Guide restaurant- It’s thick and oily. The squid is quite tough and doesn’t taste really fresh at all.
Service is not very good either, once the captain saw that we are quite young and not ordering highly priced dishes of fresh seafood, they basically gave us minimal service, and when the bill was presented, expected a tip.
I would honestly only give this restaurant a 4/10 and my tummy a 3/4 full.
Pacific BBQ & Cafe
213 Lonsdale St, Melbourne 3000
03 9663 9288
I’ve been meaning to blog this place for ages, but it always looks so good that I ate it before I had a chance to take photos. Finally, I was disciplined enough to take a photo first! And what I lovely photo! It makes my mouth water just looking at this. Pacific BBQ place is famous for its roast meat, so if you don’t know what to eat, you must try their Roast & BBQ selection. Mixed roast on dry egg noodles ($11) is a combination of two chinese roast meat (BBQ pork, Roast duck, soya chicken or roast pork) with noodles or rice. I chose dry egg noodles which is heavenly, its texture firm, almost like the ones in Hong Kong. For the roast I chose Roast duck and soya chicken. The roast duck is beautiful, although a bit fatty. The soya chicken tasted nice but the meat is a bit tough, possibly because of the part of the chicken that was on offer. You can specifically ask for chicken maryland thighs for an extra $1.5
I’ve had quite a number of chinese broccoli w/ garlic $15 in different chinese cafes, but most of the vegies are too oily, salty or the vegetable is quite old and tough. This one is not as oily but it’s nothing special, some of the stalks are quite tough.
This is the baked curry beef brisket on rice $12. This is really flavoursome and cheesy- yes, cheesy!! Somehow baked cheese works with beef brisket curry. The beef brisket is very tender, it was so hard for me to have a bit of Hubby’s cos he’s guarding it like a hawk.
The food is good, service and delivery is fast, just make sure that you don’t go there during peak hour as it gets extremely busy! 7/10
Desi Dragon
Cuisine: Indian Chinese
1/60 MacGregor Terrace
Bardon, Brisbane
Ph: 3369 9558
I enjoy trying new things when it comes to food and I have never had Indian influenced Chinese food before. I took a look at the menu in advance and was intrigued by the notion of Szechuan potato fries and salt and pepper paneer. I had been working up quite an appetite before dinner and the first entree was the Szechuan potato fries ($7). I don’t know why I’ve never heard of potato fries with a szechuan sauce before but they were very tasty. Not very spicy at all though. I wondered if I was enjoying them so much because I was really hungry but everyone else confirmed that they were indeed good for eating.
Next up was the Chicken Saiwoo ($10), buffalo wings tossed in a sweet chilli and shallot sauce. The sauce was sweet but again not spicy. Regardless I was a little disappointed that I had to share the four pieces of chicken.
Our dinner guests had ordered the Happy Dragon Platter for 2 ($19), an entree platter with two buffalo wings, a bowl of Szechuan fries and also paneer and pea wontons and lamboo tikki (some lamb and bamboo rissoles, get it?).
The salt and pepper paneer ($9) was really strange as it was neither salty nor peppery. I was expecting something similar to a nice piece of deep fried camembert but the paneer did not have much flavour and the batter did not add anything to the dish.
When we ordered our mains we asked for them to be served with medium hotness but I’m not sure if the waiter misheard us or underestimated our ability to consume chilli. If only he knew that I have always suspected that one of us sleeps with a bottle of mega death chilli under his pillow (ahemyangcough). The only dish that was a bit spicy was the Chicken Manchurian ($25), chicken dumplings tossed in a soya garlic shallot sauce.
The goat shank Szechuan style ($28) was my favourite dish. The meat was so tender and went beautifully with the herb sauce.
The chilli chicken ($25) was good, though again not spicy. There were dried whole chillies in the dish but I avoided biting into those. I also realised after a few bites that there were whole peanuts in the dish and somehow I survived without my allergies affecting me.
For a fourth main we had a designer main, where you match a meat (or paneer, tofu or vegetables) with one of their sauces. There is a choice of six sauces, Szechuan, chilli garlic, hunan black bean sauce, satay sauce, sweet and sour or ginger and lemongrass. Hubby likes to bring balance to the world by eating the foods I can’t, so he ordered chicken with the satay sauce ($21). He finished most of it off so it appears to have met his love of all peanut foods.
To accompany our mains we had some plain egg fried rice with chicken ($14). I really liked their fried rice, it wasn’t too greasy. One bowl was just right for the four of us after entrees and four mains.
We were much too full to try any dessert but I was very curious about the crisp honey sesame noodles with ice-cream ($7). Our dinner was finished off with the presentation of a small wooden chest which contained a bounty of fortune cookies and of course our bill.
It was a little pricey and I’m not used to paying a lot for Chinese food having been brought up in a family where no one likes to spend a lot of money on food mum and dad tell you they can make at home. But I don’t think mum has ever told me she can make Szechuan style goat shank and it was an adventure trying something new. An exciting night out for a foodie.
Dessert House
313 Swanston St, Melbourne
03 9663 2284
If you want something cheap and quick, it’s hard to go past Dessert House. They don’t just do desserts, actually their main focus is Hong Kong-style cafe dishes, an early, cheap and nasty version of Asian Fusion.
I’ve been there quite a number of times and if you are a gourmet foodie, stop reading now. This is nothing grand, it’s more like a Hong Kong style of junk food. Reliable dishes are the Seafood fried rice with XO sauce, chicken and sweet corn with rice, char keow teow and most of the stir fry noodles.
Unreliable dishes includes this one- deep fried chicken wings with chips, side salad and sweet chilli sauce ($7). I would recommend not to eat the limp salad with gooey salad dressing. I would also recommend not to eat the limp, oily fries. I would further recommend you not to eat the greasy wings that’s no longer (or actually was never) crispy. The sauce is alright though! May I just further add that the oil in which they fry this fries and chicken wings must be old, and they must have fried FISH in it, because this chicken wings and fries tasted like fish?
For my mains I ordered a baked mixed and match rice ($11.30). You may be wondering what mix and match rice is. The concept is simple. It’s like those fashion mag that features 6 key pieces of clothing and you mix and match to get 20 new looks.
Choose 1 meat: Chicken/beef/ pork fillet
Choose 2 sauce: Black pepper/ White/ tomato/Portuguese
Choose 1 carb: Rice/fried rice/ Spaghetti
I chose baked chicken fillet with black pepper & Portuguese sauce on fried rice. The portuguese sauce is quite nice, very creamy with a hint of curry, whilst the black pepper sauce seemed a bit overcooked and turned into a blob of black goo. The chicken fillet is huge and hubby and to eat half of mine. The fried rice underneath is nothing special, just plain rice with oil and bits of egg.
Really, there’s not much expectation that this cafe will serve top notch anything, but if you want a cheap and quick meal, this is a right choice for you.
03 9650 2628
Let me tell you right now that you shouldn’t go eat here. We got delivery from this place and it’s a RIP OFF. Firstly, delivery is free for orders over $30- normally, it’s $25 for other delivery places.
So we ordered Fried won ton ($5), wonton noodles soup ($9.8) and curry chicken with cream ($17.8)- $17.8 for a curry chicken and cream?! Are you serious?! I told Hubby it may be a HUGE box of curry chicken, and Hubby said we will see about that- how big can a box be?
Yep as you can see- not that big for a $17.8 box of takeaway.
On to the food- Hubby said my cooking is heaps better and I might as well set up my own takeaway. Awwww Hubby Whilst this is a huge compliment to me, the sad sad truth is our dinner is less than good- it’s even less than OK.
The deep fried wonton is wayyyy oily, ingredients is not that yummie, although the skin is crispy. Wonton noodle soup is pretty tasteless, I chucked half a bottle of chilli sauce in it. The curry chicken is more like satay chicken in Hubby’s opinion- although it doesn’t taste that bad.
Ohhhh… wait… I am getting a headache from all the MSG and my mouth is dry- let me go drink some water.
Now where was I? Oh yeah- DON’T BOTHER GOING THERE- EVER.
Rhodes Phoenix
Cuisine: Chinese, Yum Cha
Level 5, Rhodes Shopping Centre
Off Homebush Drive
Yum Cha – Mon to Sat, 11am – 3pm
Sunday, 10am – 3pm
It’s my birthday! Well it was my birthday, and what a better way to start the day than with YUM CHA!
Do not be fooled by stories of unimpressed diners of other phoenix restaurants, Rhodes Phoenix was one of the best Yum Cha restaurants I’ve been to in Australia. There are a few Phoenix restaurants in Sydney, and we passed on in Manly that looked tiny and had heard that the food at others was not so great. But Rhodes Phoenix is a very large restaurant and does not feel as cramped as some other places offering Yum Cha. You do not feel as though carts are going to crash into you every 2 minutes and your chair is not pressing against the chair of the person behind you, making getting out of and into your seat an intimate challenge.
I had read a few comments about the restaurant, people complaining about service and speediness of the food. But there are a few things you should really know about Yum Cha to make the most of your experience. The first is not to expect 3 star or 3 hat hold the chair out while you sit down service. This is not what Yum Cha is about. The restaurant needs to serve a very large amount of people all at once, and very quickly, so that even more people can come in. At peak times there can be up to a 45 minute to 1 hour wait outside, so the many wait staff there do not have time to have a long conversation with you, in fact they will say as little words to you as possible. But its okay, its all about the food!
Secondly, if you want the best choice of food, then don’t go there at 2pm if the service stops at 3pm. I’m not sure I’d even go at 1pm. My personal rule with Yum Cha is to go before 11.30pm at the very latest. This will mean a shorter wait (although you can still expect to wait up to half an hour or 45 minutes if its a very popular restaurant).
Our aim was to get to Rhodes Phoenix before 10.30am but we managed to get there at 11am. Still not so bad, and we were told we only had to wait 30 minutes. We grabbed our ticket and decided to go look at some shops to kill time. We came back about 25 minutes later and went up to the counter again to check if our number had been called (sometimes if you do this it will remind them that you are there and sometimes you can get a table sooner, but its really pot luck). We were then seated straight away and didn’t have to wait more than a minute for a cart to arrive.
We found that there were a lot of carts at this time of day and they would pass us quite a few times. If there’s something you really want and you can’t see it don’t be afraid to ask for it. They may seem abrupt or busy but if they can, they will help get it for you, after all they want you to eat as fast as possible so they can turn the tables. So enough of my defence of the Yum Cha culture, here is the food!
Deep Fried Dumplings with a prawn filling.
I was very impressed with the variety of dumplings available, no typical har gow in sight, and they were all very tasty. Your cart hostess will explain the different fillings to you, just ask!
Prawn and something dumplings, I forget what it was.
Again I think this was prawn meat with vegetables on top.
Fried Calamari, very nice. And I did notice that everything was nicely fried, not too tough and it looked like either we got the right day of the week or something like that because you could tell everything was fried in fresh oil.
Yes, it was my fault this was eaten before I took the photo. I was very hungry and this is one of my favourites at yum cha. Prawn paste wrapped in a bean curd skin and deep fried. Mmm.
More dumplings, I think this time it was prawn and pork meat with some vegetables.
Baked pork buns!! Yay!
Steamed BBQ Pork buns… mmm. Everybody loves these.
These clams/pippis were something different as far as my yum cha experiences go. They were very nice and I ate most of them.
Delicious fried pork belly, with a wasabi mustard sauce. I preferred to dip mine in the sweet sauce from another dish, or just have it plain.
Pork ribs in yummy sauce.
These meat balls were nice except that we poured vinegar on them thinking it was soy sauce and it overpowered the flavour.
Dessert time!
This is one of my favourite yum cha desserts, the mango crepes. They are crepes filled with cream and pieces of mango. So cool and tasy. The crepes here were a little too floury for my liking, but the mango and cream helps you to quickly forget.
We waited a very long time for this dessert. It was served out of a hollowed out watermelon and we had let the cart pass a few times before we decided we were ready for dessert. If you are even half way through your meal and the dessert cart comes by, its a good idea to just get your dessert then and let it sit waiting for you on the table. This will save you considerable time waiting for it later. Finally we decided we’d go after the cart ourselves but a waiter came by to ask if we needed something so he went after it for us instead.
This watermelon and grass jelly dessert was really nice, and even more tasty when we asked them to give us more sugar syrup! Mmm, delicious.
Overall it was a lovely meal and I would definately go back again. Check it out if you are ever in the area and if you eat too much you can do what we did which was to walk it off with a trip around Ikea.
14-16 Market Lane, Melbourne
(03) 9650 8128
I must first of all apologise the quality of the pics- we were so hungry and the food smelt so yummie that I can’t wait to eat it 
Actually only mine was like that, Shoe Queen’s one wasn’t and the one we shared is fine also.
14/2 Update: We went to Hu Tong again and this time the Shredded Turnip Pastries is very nice and well cooked- one big smiley face for them! 
Mince pork & veg wanton w/soup ($7.5 for 8 pcs). This is REALLY good- one of the best wonton I’ve eaten in Melbourne- it’s definitely HK standard, at least. The dumpling skin is translucent and the ingredients inside were soooo yummie- the only thing on my wishlist is maybe a bit more veg in the dumplings, but otherwise it’s near perfect.
Shao Long Bao ($8.50 for 8 pcs)- someone told me that if you can pick up the Shao Long Bao (Shanghaiese dumplings) by the tip and it doesn’t break, yet the skin is very thin and soft, it’s a well-made Shao Long Bao. THIS Shao Long Bao is one of those Shao Long Bao. Beautiful flavour, well made dumpling= 10/10 for me
Service is very good and really, if it wasn’t for the cold turnip pastry I would have given it 9/10- oh wellz, 8.5/10 it is! It better improve!
14/2 Update: We also tried the wonton in Chilli oil- v. yummie, the fish soup is very nice, the stir fry potato & capsicum is OK but fabulous w/chilli sauce.
Dessert House
Little Bourke St
This place is always full. They are famous for their “little car noodles” at lunch and dinner time, snacks and crepes in between. We were lucky enough to get a seat so I was pretty excited. Basically how this works : you choose different types of noodles (egg, flat rice, thin rice, Hokkien noodles etc), ingrediants (fish balls, beef balls, beef, vegetables, sausages… more than 30 different types of ingrediants) and then you can choose a sauce (curry, laksa, beef brisket sauce etc). (3 ingrediants for approx $10)
I selected turnips, stuffed eggplants, chicken wings and in addition an egg with flat rice noodles with laksa sauce. I wish I didn’t get the sauce cos it wasn’t that great. My friends got clear soup and it looks pretty yummie. The turnip was a bit tasteless too. Overall I would rate it possibly 3.5 /10. But I was hoping to go back there to try clear soup.
Ezy Pot
QV, Lonsdale St
I went to Ezypot for dinner with hubby a few days ago, and I thought I should blog a few cheap eats places also- so here it is!
My Chow Keuy Teow (above) is stir fried rice noodles with beans sprouts, prawns, fish balls, chinese sausage. It’s tad bit salty and oily- so I only ate half a dish. The chinese sausage in the dish is not my favourite and the squid is not very fresh and pretty tasteless.
But that’s the dish I ate most cos it looks a bit more healthy than the others.I also had the soft shelled crab, which is actually quite good. It has some salt & pepper stir fried capsicums & onions in it. Yummie!
