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.
This is a review of 1919 Lanzhou Beef Noodle in Burwood NSW, and certainly not a review of the similarly named 1915 Lanzhou Beef Noodles, around 100 metres up the road.
There always seems to be a line outside 1919 Lanzhou Beef Noodle, and on our visit last weekend the waiting time happened to be around 15 minutes for a seat. I wonder if the bulk of the waiting time is due to patrons only deciding on what they want once they get into the restaurant, which is a bit silly as they have a very limited and focused menu, easily visible from the outside.
Forever a fan of the classics, I chose the Lanzhou Beef Noodles ($12.80 in small) with the thinner noodle option. I really enjoyed this bowl, and I can see how this simple noodle dish has become a staple not just in Lanzhou, but across China and Chinese diasporas. The clear noodle soup, flavoured with radish, coriander, and a little bit of chilli sauce just felt so clean and wholesome, not weighed down by any soy or fattiness. The lean beef had a light but aromatic flavour to them. The noodles were hand pulled in the store window, but to be honest were not more than a caloric vehicle for the rest of the bowl. I regret only getting a small size, as it seems that the extra $1 for the large gives you a lot more soup, which is truly the star of the show.
My dining partner and also romantic partner, forever the non-classic fool, ordered the Special Dry Beef Noodle ($13.80 in small) with wide noodles. This was probably just fine but didn’t live up to the standards set by their soup noodles. It had a bit of tomato flavour to it and a bit of stewed beef flavour as well. What ultimately brought it down was the fact that the sauce did not quite coat the noodles as a pasta sauce should, even though it kind of ate more as a pasta than a Chinese noodle dish. This meant that at a certain point you were kind of just eating really wide unflavoured pasta.
These pork and cabbage steamed dumplings (4 for $4.80) were alright.
Our family has been a big fan of the Taste of Shanghai chain of restaurants since the mid 2000s, frequenting the Eastwood store back when we had family living in Epping. My mother has in fact been a VIP member of Taste of Shanghai for around the last decade, and I have in turn enjoyed dining at Taste of Shanghai with my partner and her family (who have been also going independently for a long time).
I was surprised, therefore, to be disappointed by the delivery service (via UberEats) from Lilong by Taste of Shanghai. I found the xiaolongbao, the shenjiang bao, and the pan-fried dumplings to be universally disappointing. At least part of it has to be due to the travel time (approx 10 minutes from Hurstville to Kogarah), but I do think that if a food is unable to be satisfactorily delivered then it shouldn’t be delivered at all.
Thumbs down. Possibly thumbs up if eaten in person, but until then we will not know.
UPDATE – November 2020
Despite my negative review above, and despite my strong preference to the contrary, my partner decided that she wanted to go to Lilong to eat in person. What we found was better – but not much better.
Unfortunately the first complaint needs to go to the cleanliness of the operation. Pictured above is the state of the booth seat that the diners sit on. It doesn’t look like it’s been cleaned in recent memory. The crockery we received was also dirty – the cups had a black sediment in them, as well as stains that could easily be rubbed off by hand. This is absolutely not good enough.
We started with the braised duck in special soy sauce ($12.80). This is some of the worst duck we’ve had in a while. The flesh was very tough, seemingly overcooked. The flavour was straight soy sauce flavour, with no interesting components. The salad that they served on the side looked like they came straight out of a Woolworths bag – mostly baby spinach, some shredded carrot, and other basic greenery.
spicy beef brisket noodle soup
The spicy beef brisket noodle soup ($12.80) was not special. I thought that the soup was very watery and in fact had a bit of a tap water taste. We ended up only finishing the toppings, leaving a lot of the boring noodles to spare. Not a specialty of theirs at all.
Shanghai Turnip Croissant
The Shanghai Turnip Croissant ($10.89) was actually the reason we came to Lilong by Taste of Shanghai at all. My partner had a big craving for these, but was disappointed. I personally didn’t mind – I thought the pastry was light and fluffy, and the ham filling inside was tasty, but not enough to justify the 30 minute drive.
Pan-fried pork buns / Sheng jian bao 生煎包
The pan-fried pork buns (sheng jian bao) (生煎包 – $12) is one of Taste of Shanghai’s top specialties. The shengjianbao today were mostly bald and naked – I wonder if there is some kind of global black sesame seed shortage going on. At the very least the bao were still excellent. The filling is still the same, with plenty of fresh hot soup bursting out with each bite. The bottoms were perfectly fried to a crisp. Overall, eating the sheng jian bao at the restaurant was much, much better than getting them delivered.
Wontons in Red Chilli Oil Sauce
If the sheng jian bao was one of the stars of the meal, the other would be the Wontons in Red Chilli Oil Sauce ($12.80). This is something that we almost always get when we eat at Taste of Shanghai, and one of the dishes I remember loving from my childhood. The filling is housemade pork and chive. The wonton skins are quite springy but not too undercooked. The red chilli oil sauce is, as always, delicious. I personally like to eat the wontons with a spoon in order to get a good amount of red sauce with every mouthful. This is an oft-imitated dish (for example by Dumpling Queen in Eastgardens), but only Taste of Shanghai seems to be able to execute it perfectly.
Overall I would say that dining at Lilong by Taste of Shanghai was better in person, however there are still a lot of misses on the menu. Stick with what they do best, however, and you will not go wrong – unless you are disgusted by the environment and general uncleanliness.
Tucked away on Trelawney St on the Chinese side of Eastwood is Hungry Paulie, purveyor or fine Taiwanese breakfast foods.
The Traditional Egg Pancake with Fried Bread Stick (P15 台式蛋饼包油条 – $9.50) is similar to but not quite the same as the jianbing guozi (煎饼馃子) that I had in my childhood. Thin pancakes with a layer of egg omlette are wrapped around freshly fried yóutiáo, with a bit of very light soy flavoured dressing on top. The yóutiáo at Hungry Paulie are seriously good and well worth a mention, each hand-prepared on site from scratch by artisans working behind a glass window. I can recommend this.
My partner was a big fan of the Black Pepper Pork Pastry with Shallots (Paulie Pie) (P1 胡椒饼 – $6.50), which was essentially a large spherical pie with a huge amount of peppery beef steak filling. There is little in common between this meat pie and the classic Australian meat pie. The shape is almost spherical, with a more dough-reinforced base at the bottom and minimal crust up top. The filing is steak-dominated, with big chunks of chewable meat in a black-pepper rich semi-solid gravy. It was pretty good, and at $6.50 good value and worth a try.
My partner, keen on a dessert dish, ordered the hot Roasted Peanut Rice Milk (D2 – 花生米浆 – $4) This wasn’t quite what she expected. Rather than being a dessert, it was more of a staple meal, with quite a significant size and warmth to it. It had a distinctive peanut flavour and it wasn’t too sweet, but neither of us was a big fan of it. Perhaps it just wasn’t what we were looking for this morning.
The Taiwanese Anchovy Congee (C16 – 台式吻仔鱼粥 – $12) is a loose, wet congee flavoured with little dried anchovies. It is much looser than the congees of my childhood, though not to its detriment. The toppings of youtiao and fried wonton skins added a nice amount of crunch, but unfortunately the anchovy added only a slight almost-imperceptible umami flavour. Though this was a nicely warming bowl overall, I don’t think I really got much out of the anchovy flavouring. I think that if I were to come back I would get a more standard congee, like the one with preserved egg and pork, which is a known favourite.
The Braised Combo Noodle Soup (N6 – 红烧手工牛肉三宝面 – $18.50) was ordered essentially because there was a portrait of it sitting in front of me at the bar seats. It was probably fine, but to be honest at this point in the meal we were a bit too full to enjoy anything properly. The noodles had a slight mala flavour, which I normally don’t mind (and even enjoy) but didn’t appeal to me today. It was packed with protein of multiple bovine sources – muscle, tendon, rumen, and probably some reticulum too. Whilst I enjoyed the muscle, I could only bring myself to nibble on the other beef parts – I think it really is a dish best ordered hungry. The noodles were otherwise good, and the baby bok choy was very tender and sweet. I feel like I disappointed this dish, not the other way around.
The Savoury Rice Pudding (T1 – 碗粿 – $7) was a creamy, almost radish-cakey lump of starch in a bowl of gravy and mince. It was tasty and good, though I’m still not really sure what was inside
SUBSEQUENT VISIT We re-visited Hungry Paulie around 7 months later, under a cloud of general malaise (short-lived, and well worth the extra protection) following the third dose of a COVID vaccine.
The Soy Bean Jelly with Sweet Soft Peanut (花生甜豆花 – $5.50) was like a wet, loose dou fu nao. There was less tofu than I would’ve liked, but I felt it was still adequately soft and silky, suspended in this soy milk soup. My partner, in a moment of surprisingly conviction, said that she thought that the tofu in this was still not as silky as what she gets at yum cha.
The Braised Soy Egg (滷蛋 – $2.50) was a soy egg, cut into quarters, and presented with a bit of garlic and chilli sauce. While there were no surprises with the egg itself, the addition of sauce was completely unexpected, as was the addition of shallots and lettuce. The sauce was ultimately quite tasty, and added to the experience. It’s interesting that there is a price differential between ordering this in the restaurant and via an online ordering app. It appears to be cheaper delivered, which is just strange.
The Fried Radish Cake in Garlic Sauce Dressing ($5.50) was unexpectedly enjoyable. I’m normally not a believer in the radish cakes, but this one had me surprised. The outer layers were crispily fried, whilst the gooey inner layer was only modestly thick and barely noticeable. These radish cakes were drenched in a similar sauce to the eggs, which was very valuable to adding flavour. I think that with optimal frying dimensions and garlic sauce dressing these radish cakes were able to be enjoyed even by the non radish cake lover.
The Traditional Shallots Pancake with Braised Beef (牛肉捲餅 – $11.50) was not as good as the egg pancake, and not as good as I hoped. The actual pancake itself was stellar – thin, hot, and crispy, and with good shallot flavour. What was unfortunate was the filling that the shallot was wrapped around – a huge mass of lettuce, with a small amount of dressing and some cold braised beef. I think some warmth on the beef would’ve gone a long way, and it was certainly not helped by the mass of cold, internally wet lettuce. They really need to rethink this one.
The Taiwanese Pork Thick Soup with Bamboo and added Rice (嘉義赤肉羹 – $17) was quite enjoyable. It had a quality similar to a hot and sour soup, with plenty of white pepper flavour as well as something similar to bonito flake on top. It was thickened, with a reasonable amount of meat, bamboo, and mushrooms for the price. We were almost going to riot for not getting our rice, until we realised it was actually hidden inside the soup. So it was essentially a kind of congee.
This Wintermelon Iced Tea ($3.50) was super fresh, a bit sweet but not too sweet, and quite importantly, cheap. It makes a joke out of Hong Kong Bing Sutt charging $7 for a (delicious) iced milk tea.
VERDICT I quite liked Hungry Paulie, and I’d like to take my parents to the Mascot branch once they feel safe enough from a COVID-19 to leave the house. There are plenty of things that I remember from my childhood on offer at Hungry Paulie that I think they would enjoy.
This review is about China Bowl in Waterloo (Sydney) NSW Australia, not China Bowl in Waterloo Ontario Canada.
Pan-fried pork and cabbage dumplings
The pan-fried pork and cabbage dumplings were minimally fried, with juicy insides and no breakage in the pastry. Pretty good. Also comes in boiled.
shredded pancake with beef
My partner’s order of shredded pancake with beef was not our favourite. It was a huge portion of food, but taste did not meet the expectations set by the other dishes.
The Biang Biang Noodles were yummy, a large portion with lots of toppings. It’s important to eat this with a spoon as otherwise the toppings sink to the bottom and you end up just filling up on noodles. The noodles themselves were very jin dao (bouncy)
cold poached chicken in chilli oil and peanuts
The cold poached chicken in chilli oil and peanuts (口水鸡, mouth-watering saliva chicken)were delicious. My partner’s second favourite dish, even though she doesn’t normally like Sichuan cuisine. It was also a large portion.
All in all China Bowl is good food at a good price. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to a colleague for a quick late night meal, especially if you live in the area.
