The contents of this blog are matters of opinion formed over one more visits. There has been some artistry applied and metaphors and similes should not necessarily be taken literally. All meals are independently paid for - the author has no conflicts of interest to disclose.
We’ve been to Silver Territory an unusual number of times (4 within the last 6 months) with our friends WHJ XWO CJP and NT, but they have yet to disappoint, both in terms of a regular succulent Chinese sit-down meal, as well as for their yum cha offerings.
I will bore you only with some brief dot-pointed thoughts, after which you may feast your eyes on some photos:
Our first visit was meant to be for their evening yum-cha offering, but we found that this only happened on certain nights of the week, and we had to order from a usual formal Chinese menu instead. This was actually quite good, the kind of dinner my parents would have.
Of the sit down dishes, the king prawn omlette I thought was really good and creamy.
Of the yum cha dishes, their chives and prawn dumplings were good, their chicken feet were good, in fact most things were good.
Perhaps the goodest or most interesting was their radish cake, a yum cha item that will gain a spot as a featured item below, chopped up into bite sized portions and stir fried rather than served as large slabs. Much oil, much wok hei, much delicious.
Verdict
This restaurant is not better or worse than any other yum cha establishment in Burwood. Solid, in fact, and usually a shorter queue but more rapid and Chinese style service than Royal Treasure Seafood Restaurant in Emerald Square.
Whilst we’ve parked frequently outside Yang’s Dumpling on our way to other restaurants we’d not, until now, ventured inside. We ordered a surprising amount of food for two humans trying to save for a deposit for residential property in Sydney, and much to our detriment, it wasn’t all good.
We had a combination of pan-fried pork buns (3) and pan-fried pork & prawn buns (3) for $13.80, but sadly only received two pork and prawn buns and four usual pork buns, the sesame colour-scheme system clearly failing them and us. Whilst the pork and prawn ones were nice and fresh and tasty, the lack of a third bun meant that I didn’t get a good interior shot of them.
The pan-fried pork buns were sadly not as good as the pork and prawn buns because they simply weren’t hot and fresh. These buns are not quite sheng jiang bao as they were not filled with soup, though they did have (or were meant to have) a crispy base.
The pan-fried vegetable and pork buns (4 for $9.80) were pretty good though. It’s really heat dependent.
The xiao long bao (6 for $9.80) had a strange taste and we did not finish them.
The pan-fried vegetable and pork dumplings ($11.80) were also not warm!
Love a good tea/soy egg though.
GENERAL THOUGHTS It was a real shame that a lot of what we ordered just wasn’t fresh and warm. The things that were fresh were pretty good, but the enjoyment of pan fried dumplings is really dependent on their warmth and crispiness. I guess they must not be cooked to order, which I think is below the bar set by most establishments that sell food.
Canton Noodle House’s Burwood restaurant was a frequent haunt for my family in the early 2000s, and I recently had the chance to relive those memories with my partner, ordering a couple of dishes that I loved as a young teen, as well as one of her choice in an ultra-traditional sit down meal.
My partner and I rarely eat whole fish these days, but my parents were always big fans of Deep Fried Flounder with Salt & Pepper ($21.80), even if they did their best to avoid other deep fried foods in general. This fish was as good as I remembered it, with an extremely crispy exterior, the classic “salt & pepper” mix of mild chillis, garlic, and spring onions, and a thin layer of delicate flesh beneath the batter. It was great, and totally not a low-fat post cholecystectomy dish for me to have.
The diced fillet steak with wasabi sauce ($27.80) was another favourite from childhood, though in this case much saltier than I remembered. The beef was cut into inconsistently sized and shaped pieces, with the cubed pieces clearly more tender than the rectangular ones – a distinction that I also don’t remember making as a kid. The wasabi-cream sauce was still excellent even after all these years, with just a mild nose of wasabi, but with a creaminess that dampened down the saltiness of the beef. Just look at it all glisten in the light. Great with rice.
The sun-dried scallop with chicken and fried Japanese tofu ($21.80) is not a dish from my childhood, but I simply couldn’t subject my partner to Hokkien fried rice in addition to all the other stuff that I wanted. This is a classic gravied dish of fried Japanese egg-style tofu with some chicken mince, baby corn, mushrooms and carrot, not salty enough to need to be eaten with rice, but still great with some rice to soak up the sauce and its flavours. Pretty good, though I honestly think no better than what I’ve made at home?
Rice, probably a few dollars for a bowl. White. Steamed. Good with everything.
OVERALL Canton Noodle House’s rapid service, great food and generous serving sizes are reason enough for its place as one of the top staple Chinese restaurants in Chinese dominated areas of Sydney like Burwood and Hurstville. The Hurstville restaurant is more spacious than the one in Burwood, occupying an entire first floor above the kitchen, though they were still completely full during our weekday lunch visit, with a seemingly long list of regulars who order their bowl of noodles before even sitting down.
Can recommend. I still want to go back for the Hokkien Fried Rice of my childhood. I wish the menu had photos, but in the meantime, blog posts like this will have to do.
Canton Noodle House Hurstville 中發雲吞麵家 3/206 Forest Rd, Hurstville NSW 2220 (02) 9580 0588
It was the last day before the NSW Dine and Discover vouchers were to expire, and we, along with what seemed like half of the inner-West were lined up on Burwood Rd outside a handful of restaurants still enrolled in the program and willing to accept the vouchers.
We decided on Xi’an Eatery, a place recommended to us by a colleague for its good and cheap food with a reasonable line and an incredibly exhausted workforce who looked like they were perhaps having the busiest and worst day of their lives. Our meal was preceded by an inexplicable half hour wait outside the restaurant as no less than half the tables were vacated and cleaned, before we and the next batch of patrons were admitted. Either fortunately or unfortunately for the staff this was a process marked by significant attrition, as some of our previously unknown compatriots left towards the end of the wait to spend their stimulus-bux further down the street.
Though the outside process was unimpressive, the actual process of dining, from ordering to eating, was incredibly rapid and smooth once we set foot into the restaurant. The staff were flustered but absolutely lovely, probably glad that none of our wave felt the need to engage them into what I can only imagine was an in-depth discussion regarding the origins of the ingredients like members of the previous batch. Food arrived rapidly at our table within just minutes of ordering, and consumed with similar rapidity, hunger being the best sauce.
The Signature Xi’an Pulled Pork Burger (roujiamo – $8.30 including optional coriander) was a specialty of the house, and believed by some specialists to be a marker of a Xi’an restaurant’s quality. I’m by no means a roujiamo expert, but I did find this one to be reasonably satisfying. The filling – mixture of fatty and lean pork – had excellent flavour, moistness, and mouthfeel, contrasting to my other most recent roujiamo at Taste of Xi’an in Wollongong, which I felt did not have as adequate and well distributed fatness. I’m surprised that coriander was a 50c addition, as I feel that the flavour it added was too beneficial to be left out. This must be an option because of the minority of inferior humans who find coriander unpleasant, and perhaps in a thousand years this will no longer be the case. Green capsicum is also a 50c addition, and I regret not getting it. Great filling aside, I did not love the bread, which I found to be oddly crumbly in the mouth.
I really enjoyed how lean these Xi’an Lamb Skewers ($10.80) were, but found them a bit underflavoured for my liking. It was not very spicy, even though the menu threatened it. While some online photos suggest that a bit of chilli powder is served on the side, ours didn’t come with any extra to add on, leaving us with a perfectly tender and lean lamb skewer without much flavour. If I could go back in time I would ask for some.
Another Shaanxi specialty, the Signature Biang Biang Noodle with Pork ($14.30) was one of the best I’ve ever had. The thick gravy was nice and tangy, with a good portion of meat and eggs, while the noodles had a nice Q texture. No complaints here.
The Signature Pork Pan Fried Dumplings ($12.80) were another success in a long string of successes, with a very juicy and meaty filling with good umami flavour, clearly housemade. The cooking style of these pan fried dumplings did however unfortunately lead to some jagged and dry wrapper edges, but not enough to ruin the overall good experience.
THOUGHTS I had a good and inexpensive meal, and I think so will you. Everything we had was pretty good, and the very nice staff rallied hard in the face of adversity. Recommend.
My partner went to Hong Kong Yue Baby without me, but made the mistake of bringing home these delicious custard egg yolk balls, which I enjoyed so much that we had to go back.
These salted egg yolk tang yuan ($9.50) are really delicious, super oily, large balls of glutinous rice filled with a sweet salted egg yolk filling. Not too sweet and super umami, they are served warm on these weird spoons for seemingly no reason. This dish is probably their number one house specialty, and I think make them worth a visit even if that’s all you’re going to get from them.
The peanut & taro mini French toast ($9.80) combines pieces of their taro and peanut French toasts for those with poor decision making ability. Both are of course equally oily, and differ only in the type of filling inside. My strong preference of the two is the taro type, as the peanut butter type gave me a slight feeling of staleness, which my partner contests. Either way I don’t think this was particularly a good use of calories or serum triglycerides, I wouldn’t get either again.
The steamed veg rice noodleroll ($11.80) was not bad. Very vegetably. I hadn’t had lettuce steamed in some time. It was OK.
This baked durian with cheese ($6.80) was again not bad, but not like an all time star dish. It, like the other two desserts that we had, was quite oily and not the greatest picture of wholesome.
Rock solid drink though
COMMENTS There was nothing that we had at Hong Kong Yue Baby that particularly stood out as very good, except for the salted egg tang yuan, which stood out above very good and towards excellent. They open until quite late seven days a week, and so if you find yourself craving a sweet but warm snack it would be a thing to do to just go in for this one item alone. Maybe a drink too.
Hong Kong Yue Baby Burwood 35C Burwood Rd, Burwood NSW 2134 (02) 8593 4828
