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 went to the Liang Pi shop in Burwood Chinatown and actually just got a roujiamo – my contribution to a night where we had a LARGE number of different things.
The roujiamo 腊汁肉夹馍 ($9), or “marinated meat in baked bun”, as the tax invoice would have you believe, was really very good. It had been quite a while since I’ve had one, and this really did hit the spot. The bread was so light and airy yet at the same time crispy, and the filling so fatty and moist and delicious.
The ‘mo was filled in a way such that the mouth was much wider than the base – no doubt to make it appear more full and attractive – but also to encourage larger and more satisfying bites to be taken up front.
There was a complete lack of greenery in this bun (one might sometimes expect to find a bit of herbage in a roujiamo, as the photo on the food stall’s online presence has it), but I really did not care.
These were actually good. The outer layer of cake was moist and chocolatey, though not too sweet – almost like a flat, less dense and less rich brownie.
The item is not advertised as dark chocolate, but I think is dark in the sense that most East Asian snacks just aren’t that sweet, which is a good thing.
The creamy ‘salted egg’ filling was hard to appreciate as a flavour, so if I were really keen on this dimension of the snack I’d stay away, but as a generic chocolate brownie-type snack it’s a win for me.
好丽友咸蛋黄流心派 Orion Salted Egg Yolk Lava Pie 6920907833379
Firstly, I think it’s important to recognise that this restaurant, to a Western outsider like myself, is just known as Yummy Street Food. However, to the cultured few who are able to read Chinese, it’s Fuzhou City Yummy Street Food, meaning that this restaurant serves specifically Fuzhou regional cuisine, which is not immediately apparent to the average Aussie bloke and wasn’t even apparent to me until I was writing this review.
We ate at Fuzhou Yummy Street Food one morning, in a packed restaurant where we had to sit next to a fridge behind a corner. We had a collection of small eats, which I will now describe one by one from what memory I can muster up.
The first thing we received from our order was this deep fried triangle that is really just known as a triangle cake 三角糕 ($3) in Chinese. It is a simple wedge of glutinous rice with a little bit of seasoning and unidentifiable vegetable inside, with a mild flavor a sense that it wasn’t fried in particularly fresh oil and an unenjoyable absence of a warm temperature.
This five-spice roll 五香卷 ($13.80), visually similar to a deep-fried lor bak, was not as good as what I’ve had at for example Malaysian restaurants of a similar nature. In my opinion the filling was quite loosely packed, poorly structured, with more vegetable than meat and with a less crispy bean curd wrapper than you would think from looking at it. It was, overall just not what I was expecting, which likely reflects more on my lack of understanding of Fuzhou regional cuisine than the quality of the food itself, but still this is my blog of my own personal views and I just didn’t enjoy it that much.
The Fuzhou pork wonton soup 肉燕 ($10.80) was interesting, and I’m glad I was able to try it, even though I didn’t enjoy it that much. Basically these little pork wontons are made with a wrapper made of pork skin rather than flour – quite a keto friendly dish and it’s just so deeply Chinese to make an entire dish out of pork. Contrary to the five spice savory roll these wontons were densely these wontons were densely packed with meat. I enjoyed the flavour of the soup, though ultimately I didn’t love the one thing about this dish that actually makes it special – the pork skin wonton wrapper. Despite the novelty that it provided, I guess I didn’t like the texture of it and how it felt like I really had to bite through the wrapper to get to the filling.
Another thing that we had and I didn’t love was the sweet and sour pork ribs with potato in garlic sauce 醉排骨（配土豆）($22.80) , which was not only uncharacteristically expensive for this restaurant but also majority potato as opposed to majority pork. The pork pieces were too highly battered, and the flavor too sweet rather than a balanced sweet and sour.
We also had a hot soy drink no sugar (无糖豆浆 热) ($3), which is what it is and I find it difficult to rate the same drink at a hundred different restaurants in Burwood.
Overall Neither of us particularly enjoyed our visit to Fuzhou City Yummy Street Food. While ordering we thought that there were many things we’d like to try on a subsequent visit however following our meal. I feel it is unlikely we’ll ever return. They really need to add “Fuzhou City” to the English signage.
Fuzhou City (福州城) Yummy Street Food 135 Burwood Rd, Burwood NSW 2134 0424 008 633
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.
Around 4 years ago, I had a delicious fried prawn head snack from the Korean grocer in Strathfield Plaza. It was crispy, crunchy and umami. Not getting the name nor the photo of this snack was one of the regrets of my life, and though I suspect it was from Jung Sae Woo, I have never again seen it for sale.
Today I came across what appeared to be a similar snack at a local Chinese grocer. This packet of deep fried spicy shrimp was only around $2, and so relatively low risk to try. Unfortunately they ended up being not very similar to what I remember of the Korean shrimp. These Chinese spicy shrimp were not just the head but the full animal.
They had a sticky exterior coating which meant that they were a bit softer rather than truly crispy. The stickiness of the coating made the snack seem sweet even though the flavour of it wasn’t particularly sweet – more of a spicy with a little bit of numbing and a bitter aftertaste
I didn’t really enjoy these as much as I had hoped, although my orange cat did enjoy one (and he will probably therefore die).
