Category: Chinese

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Chinese

Cheng’s Xi’an Traditional Foods (程记西安名吃) – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

I want to skip forward and just say that this place is on the elite tier of Chinese food in Burwood.

The first time we contemplated eating at Cheng’s Xi’an Traditional Foods we peered in from outside to a completely empty, dingey looking restaurant, and decided to go somewhere else instead. This was clearly a mistake, because the next time we walked past, the place was completely bar one table, and once we were seated, others had to line up outside behind us.

The food was really quite good.

We had these 12 chicken and mushroom fried dumplings 鸡肉香菇煎饺(12个) ($13.80), which weren’t my first choice in terms of dumplings but were quite delicious despite that. The wrappers were relatively thin and crispy, with a nice lace applied to the bottom. The filing was plentiful and juicy, and the dipping sauce was an extraordinary mix of vinegar and chilli crisp. My partner reflected as we walked back to our car that despite eating dumplings for decades in all kinds of situations, she was still surprised by the quality and tastiness of this sauce. I’d like to come back for some more traditionally filled dumplings in the near future.

The Xi’an Stewed Pork Burger 肉夹馍 Roujiamo ($8.50) was less good but still not terrible. It featured quite a tasty filling with a mixture of lean and fatty pork, albeit without any chillies or capsicums or other green fillings that these often have. Where it fell down, however, was the bread, which I found to be quite dry, a problem that not even the juicy meat could compensate for. There are better roujiamo in Burwood for sure.

The Xi’an Home-Style Pork Spinach-Noodles 陕西哨子干拌菠菜面 ($18.80) was truly very delicious, some of the best noodles I’ve had in some time. This is a dry bowl of noodles, with vinegar and chilli oil, some cubed celery, potato and carrot (mixed bag of frozen veggies from the supermarket-style, but probably cut in house given the dimensions and irregularity of the cubes), tofu, scallions, green noodles, and fatty pork.

The noodles are clearly made in house, green due to the addition of spinach juice to the dough, and are quite springy without being raw – a distinct feeling of jīn dào (筋道) in opposition to the rawness of some Italian pastas marketed as al dente. Mixed up together before eating, the flavour was extremely good, with each strand of noodle being well coated by oil and sauce and an excellent balance of flavour – spiciness but not too spicy, a bit of tanginess from the vinegar, and a whole lot of umami.

THOUGHTS
Delicious. Skipping Cheng’s Xi’an based purely on external appearance would be a mistake. I’d like to go back.

Cheng’s Xi’an Traditional Foods (程记西安名吃)
9/258 Burwood Rd, Burwood NSW 2134

Categories
Chinese 四川 (Sìchuān/Sichuan)

Sanku Maots’ai 三顾冒菜 – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

We tried this new malatang* restaurant in Burwood, after I promised my wife that we’d just go out for a light Chinese meal “probably something quick like noodles… not something heavy, like hotpot, or anything like that”. Though 576 Google Maps reviews with an average score of 5.0 is quite suspicious, I wasn’t offered any inducements or discounts for posting a review, and the food was actually quite good.

Priced at $42.80/kg, there is quite a reasonable selection of seafood, meat, vegetable, and processed items. All soup bases other than their traditional beef base are advertised as vegan, though I can’t really see how this would factor into things, as it’s surely impossible to keep vegan in a place like this.

The shared tongs ensure a reasonable degree of pendelluft between ingredient tubs, and I’d not think that many would be keen to pay $42.80 for boiled vegetables either.

I aimed to avoid heavily processed foods like fish balls, and chose a 526 gram bowl ($22.51) of mostly seafood (prawns, clams, sliced black fish – great), marinated meat (no frozen sliced meat rolls), tofu, with a small quantity of vegetables in the Signature Szechuan Broth – medium spiciness 经典川味 broth.

Service was slick, quick, and the meal was tasty. The medium level of spiciness was the perfect level for me, and the soup was fragrant, tasty, and warming. The chicken was unusually good.

My “not-hungry” wife chose a 548 gram bowl ($23.45) with more vegetables, some thin rice noodles, and zero seafood in the Herbal Three-Fresh Healthy Broth 草本三鲜锅底. This broth was also quite tasty and flavourful, and the noodles here did help to bring up some of the flavour that is often lost when having a non/low-carb malatang.

Overall, the meal was good. I’m still a little press X to doubt about the 5.0 star review, but you’re right. I’d also not have any reason to dock it stars, I guess.

*: I am informed by netizens that maocai and malatang are actually somewhat distinct concepts, with maocai featuring a smaller volume of soup, and being designed to be eaten with rice. That would certainly explain the rice cookers filled with all-you-can-spoon rice, which we completely ignored.

Sanku Maots’ai 三顾冒菜
228 Burwood Rd, Burwood NSW 2134

Categories
Chinese Dessert

YOU YOU Bear – Ashfield NSW Restaurant Review

My wife and I are fans of bears, as animals that are vaguely friend-shaped, and so probably the fourth or fifth time we walked past YOU YOU Bear, we decided to go in.

We had a cup of thick-cut fried yogurt (though I don’t know how it’s fried, I think it’s more like a flash frozen sort of deal), for $14.80, consisting of an assortment of all the flavours that were available, ranging from oreo to succulent grape, and everything in between.

The whole thing wasn’t that great to be honest, most were a little bit sweet (true: not too sweet), and a little bit salty, but not something that really made either of us that happy, despite quite a long walk in the evening heat.

YOU YOU Bear
263 Liverpool Rd, Ashfield NSW 2131

Categories
Chinese 四川 (Sìchuān/Sichuan) 重庆 (Chóngqìng/Chongqing)

Yummy Noodle King 巴蜀小面 – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

Google Maps lists Yummy Noodle King 巴蜀小面 as a self-service restaurant rather than a Chinese restaurant, and in a sense that’s true.

We walked in with no expectations and asked for two noodles to be recommended by the staff, resulting in two noodle dishes and a plate of dumplings.

The pork and peas noodle 特色豌杂面 ($14.80) was really yummy, with great umami flavour from the soy braised pork mince, as well as a bit of chilli oil and the weird creaminess of the corn. The dish was, I thought, better eaten as pictured rather than mixed together, as mixing it up made the pea goo go everywhere, making it impossible to avoid when I wanted at times to just have a purely meaty mouthful.

The braised beef noodle soup 红烧牛腩面 ($15.80) was quite delicious, apart from the actual beef, which I had mixed feelings about. The taste of the broth was good, as was the presence of the sour Chinese pickles, though the beef itself had a bit of a corned beef or silverside flavour, which was weird to contemplate in the setting of a Chinese noodle bowl. Overall, I don’t think this made the bowl unenjoyable, however, I probably would have preferred a more Chinese tasting braised beef.

The pork and chive dumplings 水饺, which were 12 pieces for $13.80, were below par for the local area. Though the filling was reasonable, with sweet chives, the wrappers were a bit thicker than I would have liked, making the dumplings more floury and less meaty.

Overall, quite a nice restaurant, and we do have vague inclinations to come back, probably before this post is published.

The self-service nature of this restaurant refers to the fact that once the food is ready, our number was called and we had to go pick it up from the counter. The restaurant, similar to My Aunt’s Handmade Noodles, offers free noodle topups, though we did not take advantage of this as the shop was closing and we were very full already.

Yummy Noodle King 巴蜀小面
181C Burwood Rd, Burwood NSW 2134


Categories
Chinese

Skewer House 串家 – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

Lovin’ Lamb was closed, and this stall in Burwood Chinatown was the nearest alternative.

We had these spicy but less spicy secret recipe lamb skewers ($12.60), which presented a good mixture of fatty and lean lamb coated in an enjoyable chilli-cumin seasoning.

Absolutely comparable to Lovin’ Lamb. No notes.

Skewer House 串家
Burwood Chinatown
127-133 Burwood Road Burwood NSW 2134