Category: 四川 (Sìchuān/Sichuan)

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Chinese 四川 (Sìchuān/Sichuan)

Bowl Bowl Beef 碗碗牛四川跷脚牛肉 – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

Bowl Bowl Beef 碗碗牛四川跷脚牛肉 is a small stall on the upper level of Burwood Chinatown, offering Sichuan themed noodles and soups – possibly but not provably linked to the Taikoo Li, Le Shan group of restaurants on Burwood Road. Surely it doesn’t make sense for them to have three restaurants in one suburb? I went on a weekday afternoon, availing a 40% eat-in discount from an app that cost me thousands in extra fees during the 2018-2021 era.

I ordered the Qiao Jiao Beef Brisket 跷脚牛肉 ($17.80) from the menu underneath the main section with the big pictures. That should’ve been the first clue. I immediately tried to lift up the noodles with my chopsticks for a representative photo, but I was unable to find any. Fearing that perhaps they had messed up my order, I reviewed a picture of the menu on my phone, and I had indeed ordered a bowl of soup without noodles. Though it isn’t what I would have wanted, I had to prevail.

The soup was pretty good. it had a light, not overpowering herbal taste, but not in the sense of it being Chinese medicine in nature. The broth was clear and felt more cleansing than what could’ve been a heavier alternative, possibly aided by the cabbage, which had most of its intrinsic flavour boiled away. There was plenty of beef within the bowl for one person, though I think I would’ve been much less satisfied with the quantity had I paid the full price rather than with a 40% discount.

I enjoyed the mixture of lean and fatty pieces of sliced brisket, especially the fact that the ratio of straight fat to muscle was not too high. The beef was tender but chewy, providing a good mix of mouthfeels. The soup was served with a side of chilli flake-powder, with which no instructions were provided. Unfortunately there were no other more clued-in diners nearby for me to watch and copy, so I just intermittently dipped some of the beef slices into the powder.

Overall not bad for a soup, and definitely suitable for someone looking for a low carb Chinese food option, but I was really fanging for some noodles.

The prawn and beef pan fried dumplings 鲜虾牛肉锅贴 ($14.80) were really excellent. They were pan-fried well – crispy on the outside, but still moist on the inside, and featured a lacey skirt, which added extra crisp.

The filling was very prawn forward, with large portions of prawn wrapped in beef. The flavour of the filling and the dumplings themselves were very umami. Delicious. My only complaint was that these were not served with vinegar, but I realised on my way out that there was vinegar available at the counter.

Overall I didn’t get what I thought I was getting, but the food was pretty good, especially at a 40% discount. I have to say I’m not that excited about eating hot food out of disposable plastic any more, however.

Bowl Bowl Beef 碗碗牛四川跷脚牛肉
Burwood Chinatown, 127/133 Burwood Rd, Burwood NSW 2134

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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

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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


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Chinese 四川 (Sìchuān/Sichuan)

The Dolar Shop – Haymarket NSW Restaurant Review

The Dolar Shop is, to date, the most luxurious and expensive hot pot restaurant I’ve ever eaten at. We paid around $70 per person for a full hot pot meal with 7 attendees. The restaurant was operated in the personal hot pot format, and so each person needed to fork out for individual soup bases.

The quality of the wagyu was truly extreme, and each briefly-boiled mouthful was a great experience. The sauce station provided ample choices, and there were lower-yield complimentary options including fresh fruit and matcha and vanilla soft serve.

UPDATE DECEMBER 2022

I went back to The Dolar Shop with my friends HWJ XWO and CJP, and we managed to spend even more ($85 pp) this time. Key differences from this visit were that we, by choice, had a lot more vegetable and tofu. Wagyu was the only beef available with no cheaper options on the menu – I’m not sure if this was the case the first time around. I had the Exquisite Silver Soup on the recommendation of HWJ and XWO, which was a peppery soup containing some pork tripe and chicken broth, quite good, but quite expensive – I’m not sure that a plain soup would’ve been that much worse.

They also mixed some initial sauces for us tableside, with the option to also create our own at the sauce bar, which I don’t remember happening the first time, and the dessert changed to quite a good strawberry and yoghurt flavoured soft serve.

VERDICT
The Dolar Shop, being extremely expensive, is really only a high end option for a special occasion. There are much plenty of cheaper hot pot places across Sydney that are almost as good.

The Dolar Shop Sydney
Shop 5-7 1909 Dining Precinct, Level 3
Market City, 13 Hay St, Haymarket NSW 2000
0487 886 677

Featured Colleagues: WKS, JZHW, BC, AL, JO

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Chinese 四川 (Sìchuān/Sichuan)

Haidilao – Chatswood NSW Restaurant Review

Haidilao’s food isn’t really all that special to nearby competitor Memory Tongue. The meats are good quality, and there are plenty of soup bases and sauces to choose from. It fits firmly one tier below Market City’s The Dolar Shop both in price and the availability of truly premium cuts of meat, however on equal standing with other more upper echelon offerings.

I appreciated the communal style hot pot divided into portions based on soup base, as well as the electronic tablet-based ordering system. While the electronic ordering system helps to bridge language barriers and reduce the need for imagination with its photos of each menu item, I found that in this particular situation it did not achieve the third desired effect of minimising human contact with the wait staff.

I must preface this by saying that I have absolutely no complaints about our host, who was polite, courteous, and friendly. What I did not enjoy was the overbearing, helicopter style service, which made me feel watched and uncomfortable. Our waiter’s impeccable attention to detail was more of a hindrance than a help. His hawk eyes would not allow us to pour our own prune juice. He was extremely capable of keeping track of when we were sipping prune juice and would top up our glasses after almost every swig. There is a very thick line between good service and being too up in one’s face, and I think that despite any good intentions he may have had this crosses it.

The food was good, but in the interest of keeping my choppers on the helipad I probably won’t be coming back. Some people probably like it. I didn’t.

Haidilao
Shop 607/1 Anderson St, Chatswood NSW 2067
(02) 9411 2006