Category: Chinese

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Chinese

The Eight – Haymarket NSW Restaurant Review

This will be a quick play by play of our yum cha lunch at The Eight, chosen because sadly Marigold is no more, and The Eight had 2 hours of free parking (though we overstayed by like 20 minutes and paid $9 for the privilege).

These pork spare ribs in black bean sauce were fine. Pretty meaty, not super fatty. Flavour I thought was a bit too mild.

I think these steamed chicken feet could’ve been steamed a little bit longer, but the flavour was good.

I actually also thought these bean curd skin rolls could’ve been more flavoured.

The steamed chive dumplings were fine, not extraodinary, and could’ve used more chive taste. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my specifically, things just tended towards blandness.

The shu mai were good, and adequately flavoured.

The texture and flavour of this this doufu fa was good.

The steamed custard buns were really good! My first one burst hot liquid all over me and the table, and our friend MP gave up hers so I could have an extra.

Overall
We had a pretty decent and well priced meal, spending around $32 per person for yum cha, with 2 hours free parking down below during the day, and unlimited free parking after 6PM (important for CBD lunch considerations). My partner had had dinner with her mother and brother the previous week and had a similarly good experience.

Not bad (though I think Marigold was better. RIP.)

The Eight
Market City Shopping Centre, Level 3/13 Hay St, Haymarket NSW 2000
(02) 9282 9988

Categories
Chinese

Shanghai Night – Ashfield NSW Restaurant Review

There’s this super odd row of restaurants on Liverpool Road in Ashfield where separate establishments named “New Shanghai Night”, “New Shanghai”, and “Shanghai Night” are lined up one after another. The subject of our review today is Shanghai Night, the Westernmost of the three.

The Shanghai Spicy Noodle Soup ($12.80) was good. It was quite a large serving for the price, and with plenty of meat and flavourful soup. Not too spicy. Not much else to say apart from a recommend.

The Si-Chuan Dry Wonton with Cucumber and Chilli Oil ($10.80) looked vastly different to the menu photo, but tasted pretty good. The wontons were plenty meaty, however my partner raised some concerns about the state of the peanut butter, which I did chose not to try.

The Steam Shanghai Style Mini Pork Bun ($8.80) were not the best. The most disappointing thing about them was the fact that they were mostly broken. In fact, only 2 out of the 8 were received intact, a feat that I can easily manage with a box of frozen xiao long bao at home.

THOUGHTS: With so many competitors in the Shanghai food space within a one metre radius, I don’t think I will be going back to this particular restaurant any time soon.

Shanghai Night
275 Liverpool Rd, Ashfield NSW 2131
(02) 9798 8437

Categories
Chinese

MC Golden Tower – Haymarket NSW Restaurant Review

One of the first meals my partner and I shared together back in 2012 was at Market City’s food court, where we piled as much food as we could onto a plate of fixed surface area, and I watched in adoration as she finished all of the food when I could not.

I took her back to Market City when I proposed to her to try and relive this experience. Sadly the exact restaurant from 10 years ago was either unidentifiable or nowhere to be found, but MC Golden Tower (officially just “Golden Tower” post their renovation) seemed an appropriate substitute.

There was no self-serve on this visit, and it’s highly possible that this particular restaurant has never offered that at all. We had a number of choices (2 or 3 for a set price) served by the shop clerk with an experience somewhat marred by poor communication even though we do speak some Chinese between the two of us. Our choices of braised eggplant and soy chicken were honestly quite good for this hyper-cheap food court meal, though I wasn’t a huge fan of the fried rice which I felt was a bit wet and sticky compared to gold standard fried rice.

Golden Tower
Market City Food Court, 9-13 Hay St, Haymarket NSW 2000
(02) 9212 1100

Categories
Chinese Malaysian

Ho Jiak – Strathfield NSW Restaurant Review

My first visit to Ho Jiak’s Haymarket restaurant last year didn’t leave me with a lot of great feelings, but my most recent visit to their Strathfield food court store did. Barring the involvement of serious live shellfish and other seafood, East and South East Asian food generally has an upper price point that most patrons would be willing to pay. I can only imagine that the higher overhead costs in the CBD are part of what makes Ho Jiak’s Strathfield Plaza branch a more attractive option.

Food is reasonably priced, and service is fast. There is no in-restaurant seating, with only a few tables and plastic chairs outside shared with the kebab shop across the corridor. While some may baulk at this lack of formality, I think it’s important to consider this is the kind of thing that keeps food as cheap and accessible as possible. I’ve certainly never thought that char kway teow needs a tablecoth, though if the presence of a few less savoury characters roaming the halls of Strathfield Plaza could be managed that would be more ideal.

The Bah Kut Teh Rice ($19) was good. From the garlic infused rice to the you tiao to the herbal soup and pork ribs, each bite was full of flavour. The rice was warm and moist, and the serving of pork belly was quite generous for the price. I didn’t quite feel that the bak kut teh was the standard flavour – it had more of a dark soy sauce component – but it was good nonetheless. The you tiao was a bit tepid in temperature, but somehow incredibly crispy, great dipped in the soup or on its own.

If the bah kuth teh rice was good, the Indomee Goreng Salted Duck Egg & Crab Meat ($22) was even better. Every single bite of this was good. The noodles were al dente and delicious, completely transcending the expectations set by its 40 cent per packet price. The rich soy, spicy, and umami flavours of the noodles were amplified by the mince, fish balls, and vegetables, and duck egg accompaniments. The crab meat, though probably the bigger money ingredient here, didn’t really add as much as I had hoped. This was just an amazing dish (if a little salty), though next time I’d save $4 and get it without the crab.

The Inchi Kabin (4 for $13) were Nonya-style deep fried chicken mid wings. Mid wings are, in my opinion, the optimal part of the chicken wing, and I much prefer them to drumsticks. These particular wings were quite good, with a nice crispy skin and moist interior. They reminded me of those at Nam2 in their construction.

The Teh Susu ($3.50) is a very cheap milk tea.

VERDICT
I really enjoyed Ho Jiak’s Strathfield Plaza outlet. The food was great, and the prices quite reasonable. There are both pros and cons to its food court location. We were asked for spare change by the same guy twice during our quick meal.

Ho Jiak Strathfield
Shop 33 Strathfield Plaza, 11 The Boulevarde, Strathfield NSW 2135
(02) 9008 8020

Categories
Chinese

吃在山东 Taste of Shandong – Hurstville NSW Restaurant Review

I love a good Shandong chicken, but a Shandong chicken is apparently not an actual Shandong regional dish. Here I will describe some dishes that apparently are.

Here is a collection of braised foodstuffs, including braised pork belly ($5), braised meatball ($5), braised soymilk film ($3), braised chilli ($3), and braised egg ($3), cross-sectional imaging to come. I had mixed feelings about this one, and only really liked the meatball out of all of them. The chilli I found was extraordinarily spicy for such a large pepper, whilst the tofu I thought was not very deeply flavoured at all. The pork belly was alright but not super tender, and the egg cooked all the way through and really nothing special.

If I could go back in time in a time machine, I would only get the braised meat ball, which was very soft and tasty, but probably needed a bit of rice to go with it.

I’ve been searching my entire life (or at least ever since Taste Gallery in Parramatta closed – a real loss for Western Sydney) for some good zhenjiang pork ribs. Sadly these marinated pork ribs with sweet black vinegar ($12.80) weren’t it. I thought that these ribs were unusually meaty, but not very tender. Their taste was not what I had pictured in my nostalgia-addled brain (nostalgia for a restaurant that I ate at two years ago – does that still count?) with a rich plum taste with too much sweetness and not enough sourness, as well as an unpleasant oiliness. Oh well, the search goes on.

I was quite keen on some dumplings (a guy on an adjacent table had some incredibly pungent chive ones that he was ripping through by himself), but my partner chose for us to have the shandong soup buns ($12.80) instead. I honestly don’t know why we’re trying to pretend that these weren’t just xiao long bao, and in my opinion inferior to those from the freezer at your local Asian grocer.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
I didn’t love what we had to eat, though for some reason my partner still wants to go back in the future. It might have to be by herself.

吃在山东 Taste of Shandong
177 Forest Rd, Hurstville NSW 2220
0431 213 106