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.
I rarely ever do frozen grocery reviews (because of pure laziness), but this was actually pretty good. It is a pack of frozen bean curd roll / 鮮竹捲 / xiān zhú juǎn / sin zuk gyun that was only like $7 or something.
They were simple to steam, and though they came out relatively wet, all I had to do to eat them was fish them out with some chopsticks.
The flavour was quite accurate, the bean curd wrapper was soft, and they were packed with meaty filling.
They’re not a luxury meal, I don’t think they’re much worse than what you would get at yum cha. I’d have them again.
I went out of my way between night shfits looking for some deep fried mini shrimp heads to bring to work, but could only find these deep fried baby crabs.
As deep fried baby crabs go, these certainly did the job. They had quite a nice seafoody umami taste, though were quite oily and would be really at the apex of any food pyramid as a sometimes only treat.
The only bad thing about them is how slightly freaky the little crab bodies look. I recommend first having a few with your eyes closed, so that you can enjoy them before you look at them.
Today’s review is about Man Xiao Bao’s Fat Sauce Ramen. There doesn’t appear to be any official English translation for the name, but I think fat sauce, or grease sauce works pretty well.
The packaging is extremely elaborate, with no less than seven individually packed components, consisting of noodles, fried tofu wrapper, dried coriander, ghost chilli powder, bean sprouts in vinegar, more vinegar, meaty greasy sauce, and of course noodles.
The cooking instructions were translated by Google Translate as I’m a bit of a 文盲. Essentially the noodles are cooked separately and drained, then the toppings, then it’s all mixed together. Despite the seven component smorgasbord, the bok choy and egg pictured on the packet was not included, and had to be added separately.
Luckily, I had some bok choy in the fridge, and some of the excellent 78 degree snack eggs from Weilong in the pantry.
Taste wise, I found these noodles to be unfortunately extremely sour. It is probably my fault that I didn’t read the (CHINESE) instructions on the little sauce packets themselves, which if I did I would know that I was meant to adjust the amount to put in by personal preference. Still, I can’t imagine that anyone would want to put all of that vinegar sauce in.
The famed combination of stewed bone soup, fried meat paste, and braised grease sauce, as appetizing as those components once translated into English, were not perceptible to me.
I overall did not enjoy this, despite the journey of putting it all together, and won’t be buying this again willingly.
Man Xiao Bao Fat Sauce Ramen (满小饱肥汁拉面) UPC 6973279800241
While I guess some of the grocery posts on this blog have worldwide appeal, much of what I eat from the local Asian grocery store is made here in Sydney, and only available at a few places. This makes me writing this essentially useless, as the likelihood of even a single person reading this and then deciding to buy or not buy these wontons is exceedingly low.
Despite this, I thought the Prestons Foods Pork & Garlic Chive Wontons to be quite solid. The filling was generous and had a good meaty texture and good chivey flavour. I’d eat them again.
It took about six months of heavy targeted ads on social media for me to succumb to ordering LeTAO’s made-in-Japan cheesecakes.
The first thing that struck me about the LeTAO cheesecakes were their size. Even though their size and weight are explicitly stated on the website, I clearly did not pay close attention to this as both cheesecakes that I ordered were much smaller than I had imagined, especially given their premium price point.
It was a matter of quality over quantity, however, as these cheesecakes, though expensive were quite good. The melon double seasonal limited cheesecake ($40.99) had a pleasant mouthfeel, not too sweet taste, with a hint of melon flavouring. It was well enjoyed by the entire family, who are usually more used to Savoy’s taro cake but were forced by me to try something new.
The Parfait D’or Fromage ($37.99), a rectangular cheesecake of also very small proportions contained a mixture of camembert, soured cream cheese and mascarpone. The camembert definitely added a dimension of strangeness to the cake that the melon cake did not have, though none was more strange than its dimensions. It should be noted that the promotional pictures on the LeTAO website feature this particular cheesecake being served on a wooden board, with nothing of a known size to compare it to.
THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS These LeTAO were pretty good, classically not too sweet given their East Asian origins, and definitely an interesting change up from the classic sponge cake that might rule your family traditions. Their price point and small size are however quite challenging, and important to consider for anyone planning to feed more than a few people.
