Category: Chinese

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iBao (i包) Kitchen – Rhodes NSW Restaurant Review

I recently had the pleasure of being among the first to receive my COVID-19 booster vaccine at the WSLHD Sydney Super Dome Quodos Bank Arena vaccination centre, and took myself out for a nearby breakfast to celebrate. The focus of my journey, Shiweiju, was not open, and I settled on nearby iBao (i包) instead.

Similar to Shiweju, iBao (i包) serves a variety of Tianjin or Northern Chinese breakfast classics, in a no-nonsense setting. I ordered in English (much to the disappointment of the man working there) a number of dishes from my childhood.

The Soy Milk ($3), is made in the Chinese style, with a light and watery mouthfeel. It was served warm in a coffee cup, with a small amount of sugar mixed in. I don’t know whether this soy milk is made in-store or merely purchased by the jug and heated, but the uneven distribution of sugar towards the bottom of the cup implies that it is made fresh.

I was a big fan of the pancake rolled with crisp fritter ($6.80). The thin and pliable jianbing, cooked with egg, had a fresh and light taste. The tian mian jiang (sweet bean sauce) was evenly applied and not overpowering, and while the jianbing was filled with a strange fried fritter rather than the classic youtiao, it still added the same crispiness.

The pork bun ($2.50) is a classic Tianjin bun, typified by the goubuli baozi that dogs don’t care about. The exterior is soft and almost dangerously thick, but when matched bite-for-bite with the moist and pork filling the meat to carb ratio was perfectly adequate. These are quite cheap and filling, and appear to be well loved by local community, who bought them in larger quantities to take home and eat with their families.

COMMENTS
There aren’t that many restaurants in Sydney focused on Tianjin or Northern Chinese cuisine, and I’m very grateful for the ones that do exist. My one gripe would be the staff member who went out for a cigarette just outside the restaurant’s front door, with the wind blowing some of the smoke inside. Maybe it added to the authenticity though.

iBao (i包) Kitchen Rhodes
Shop 5/7 Rider Blvd, Rhodes NSW 2138
(02) 9029 1656

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Chinese

Yummy Seafood Chinese Restaurant – Beverly Hills NSW Restaurant Review

There aren’t that many restaurants that take new customers at 1AM, but Yummy Seafood Chinese Restaurant in Beverly Hills is one of them. To the annoyance of the restaurant’s staff, we ordered only one dish between the two of us. Looking around us however we saw multiple groups of young Chinese in their early 20s eating lobster in the dead of night.

500g Pipis in XO Sauce with vermicelli ($44.80)

I’ve been wanting to go to XOPP or Golden Century to try their XO Pipis for some time, but a whole constellation of reasons have meant that I have yet to go. I took the opportunity of eating without my seafood-averse girlfriend to order the the Pipis in XO Sauce ($59.60/kg – market price) with vermicelli ($15 add-on).

The meal was really just OK. The vermicelli was nicely fried, and the XO sauce which coated the pipis and noodles added a good slightly spicy flavour to it. The pipis were fresh from the tank but honestly didn’t taste that fresh or flavourful.

We were served watermelon and orange after our single dish meal and hurried out with some looks just as their closing time of 2AM hit. (There were some high rollers still eating.)

3.5/5 late night special

Yummy Seafood Chinese Restaurant
477 King Georges Rd, Beverly Hills NSW 2209
(02) 9580 0788

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Mr Stonebowl – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

My first experience with Mr Stonebowl was at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when I ordered some dinner from their Hurstville restaurant that took around two hours to deliver and ended up being quite disappointing. My second experience, on the first day of reopening in October 2021, was much better, though not without its faults.

Our ordering was largely guided by my esteemed colleague JZHW, a Burwood local and Mr Stonebowl evangelist.

The garlic prawn with stir fried rice in squid ink ($19.80), a “must-order” per both JZHW and the staff at Mr Stonebowl, was a pretty reasonable dish. It was a large pot of dark-coloured rice covered in a creamy sauce and topped with some battered and deep fried garlic prawns. This configuration of white sauce atop rice was fusion in a sense reminiscent of Hong Kong cafe style cuisine, though no cultural inspirations have been explicity mentioned by the restaurant. Overall a large, economical, and good (if heavy) dish.

The chicken feet and bean silk in homemade sauce ($8.60) wasn’t really very good. This dish was the first indication that steamed yum cha style dishes aren’t really this restaurant’s specialty. While feng zhua (鳯爪) is typically steamed to the point where the meat and skin is falling off the bone and easily eaten off, these little chicken feet still had all of the connective tissues clinging to the bone. Unfortunately this made for a difficult to eat and less flavourful dish. A few extra minutes in the steamer would’ve made a lot of difference, and honestly this is an amateur mistake to make. I wouldn’t order this again.

The stew beef tendon with crispy quail eggs ($17.80) was alright. I wasn’t a huge fan of the flavour, but I do like myself a bit of beef tendon in pho, in instant noodles, and just in general. The decision to slightly fry the quail eggs to make them crispy and dry on the outside was a strange one.

The special soup with fish fillet, prawn, razor clam, and quail eggs ($18.20) was surprisingly spicy, but had quite a good flavour. The nature of the fish fillets wasn’t clear but our JZHW’s Vietnamese partner thinks it was basa.

The pork ribs in Beijing style sweet and sour sauce ($17.80) were not, as I thought they would have been, Zhenjiang pork ribs. Instead they were your pretty standard sweet and sour sauce pork ribs with cubed pineapple in tow. They were pretty good to be honest, but not really traditional Chinese food. This would all be much easier if I could read Chinese.

The pork and chive dumplings ($8.80) were a standout. Very good, very authentic, and very cheap. I could recommend these to anyone.

The shumai ($8.50), conversely, were quite bad. They were very loose inside, packed with vegetables rather than the classic pork or prawn meat. Thematically they were more similar to the Australian “dim sim”, a fried mess of minced cabbage and mystery meat. I wouldn’t recommend these.

The prawn dumplings (xia jiao) ($8.50) were alright. They were plump and tasty, though I felt like again they could’ve been steamed for longer. The wrappers were just a bit too chewy in my opinion.

The Singapore style barramundi ($20.80) was, in my opinion, better than that at related restaurant Mr Stonepot in Eastwood. While I think the fish was probably leaner or smaller and the dish a dollar more expensive, I thought the sauce tasted better here.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
I think that Mr Stonebowl does live up to its reputation for providing reasonable quality Chinese food at an attractive price. The four of us had initially set out for hotpot, but after finding we looking at paying around $80 pp for the only hot pot available in Burwood on the first night of eased COVID-19 restrictions we chose to dine here instead at the relative bargain basement price of $33 per person. There are certainly things I’d avoid at Mr Stonebowl, which generally includes anything steamed, but the rest of the food seems pretty reasonable.

Mr Stonebowl Burwood
GF 122, 122-126 Burwood Rd, Burwood NSW 2134
(02) 9745 1388

Diners – WKS, JW, JZHW +1

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Chinese

Taste of Nanking (老南京) – Waterloo NSW Restaurant Review

One tried and true formula for naming a Chinese restaurant is rolling the dice on different combinations and permutations of the words “Golden”, “Empress”, “Dragon”, “Jade”, and finishing off with ” Seafood Restaurant”. Another familiar technique is to name a restaurant after one’s hometown and append “Taste of” in front of it. Taste of Shanghai is one famous example. Taste of Nanking is another.

TASTE OF NANKING is located on Gadigal Avenue in Waterloo, a recently developed strip of Asian (mostly Chinese) restaurants and groceries with quite a few gems to find. It is somewhat down the street from U STORE, an expensive but fun Asian grocery store with a wide array of snacks and a good mix of not only Chinese but also Korean and Japanese goods.

Taste of Nanking’s Mixed Noodle with Scallion Sauce and Minced Pork ($13.80) was really good. It is a dry noodle dish with a delicious sauce base and a generous helping of mince. The serving is huge, and I enjoyed the addition of the steamed bok choy which provided a fresh and moist counter to the thick saucy noodle dish. There’s a chilli symbol next to it on the menu, but it has more of a sweet taste than a spicy taste. I can definitely recommend this one.

Crayfish topping on steamed rice (Luxury)

The Crayfish Topping on Steamed Rice dish comes in three different grades – Original, Luxury, and Supreme – denoting the quantity of crayfish topping added. I had the “Luxury”, level with 120 grams of crayfish topping, coming in at $22.80.

My feelings about this dish were a bit mixed. This was my first time having small crayfish like this, and I appreciated the small prawny flavour but wondered what kind of hell it was to have to hand peel these tiny crayfish that I was eating multiple of in each mouthful. Apart from the yummy crayfish, the sauce that swam in was a bit too salty and tasty for me, and in this sense the rice definitely came in handy. The egg was yummy, and the dish did benefit from the addition of extra egg. The preserved vegetables added a sweetness to the otherwise quite salty dish. Again this was quite a large serving and like the mixed noodles we took what we couldn’t finish home. If I had one alteration to suggest I would either only get the Original variation (assuming that with only 90 grams of crayfish topping there would be less salty sauce) or add some additional rice.

Nanking Special Egg

The Nanking Special Eggs ($2) were a little bit special. They are your classic marinated soy/tea eggs, served cold, and really good eaten with the mains.

Braised Jumbo Meat Ball in Brown Sauce

The Braised Jumbo Meat Ball in Brown Sauce ($6.80) have a maximum order of 1 per customer, which I don’t really think makes sense unless there is a good reason for scarcity – normally more orders mean more income for the restaurant. They are a large ball formed out of minced pork. My partner quite enjoyed their soft internal texture, however I thought that they were a bit too salty to have on their own. They’re not bad, but if you are ordering these balls I’d highly recommend you have them with some rice.

Signature Nanking Soup Dumplings

The Signature Nanking Soup Dumplings (6 for $7.80) were pretty much Xiao Long Bao but without the folds in the pastry. I’m not really sure what else is different – perhaps a difference in the filling, but given the reasonably wide variation of XLB fillings in general I think it still fits in the same spectrum. The soup of Nanjing soup dumplings is also meant to be more prominent, and while these were quite soupy I think again they fall within the same spectrum as the XLBs of Sydney. They are cheap, juicy, and cheerful.

CONCLUSION

Taste of Nanking is not generally well-rated online, but I’m not too sure why. One one star review on Google Reviews was because their air conditioning wasn’t cold enough one Summer day, which I don’t really think is enough to poo-poo an otherwise good meal. Service seems to be another common complaint I thought the guy running front of house was really enthusiastic, although agree that it was a bit odd that we were given one cup to get water from the water cooler between the two of us.

Overall I think the food was good, and any of my gripes about it being too tasty could have been solved by ordering some extra white rice. Portions were huge and the meal was generally quite good value.

4.5/5 – Not for a business lunch or romantic date, but good for a quick casual meal or takeaway.

Taste of Nanking 老南京 Waterloo
1/18 Gadigal Ave, Waterloo NSW 2017
(02) 9313 8450

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Chinese

The New Dong Dong Noodles – Kingsford NSW Restaurant Review

It pains me to not be able to write a proper review for The New Dong Dong Noodles in Kingsford, it having been almost a year since I last had their food.

The overall theme for this restaurant was good quality, authentic Chinese food at good prices. I will provide you with some photos of takeaway meals but unfortunately not much commentary.

I’m a big fan of Hokkein fried rice ($17.80), and The New Dong Dong does it well.

The brisket in the beef brisket and dumpling dried egg noodle soup ($16.50) was plentiful and authentic, though I was not a fan of the egg noodle’s flavour themselves.

I think this Shandong (Shan Tung) chicken ($19.80) was OK, though I have had both better and worse.

I’ve never been able to keep my girlfriend away from salt and pepper pork chops ($18) and The New Dong Dong Noodles’ were no exception.

The beef with egg gravy and fried rice ($16.30) was good with good flavours, though I think the balance would’ve been better with just a little bit more topping or just a little bit less rice.

CONCLUSIONS
Overall, very good and very satisfying place to order Chinese food from in the Eastern Suburbs.

The New Dong Dong Noodles
428 Anzac Parade, Kingsford NSW 2032
(02) 9662 1877