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
