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.
One of the best meals that we had as we were scurrying across the Inner West and Inner East trying to commit the next 30 years of our lifes’ savings on a piece of residential property was at Yan’s Kitchen in Waterloo. Cheap and delicious, I can highly recommend paying this Northern Chinese restaurant a visit.
Yan’s Slow Cooked Beef Noodles 闫记大块牛肉面 ($15.80) were excellent. They had a lovely soup flavour, with lots of umami, a slight bit of spice (don’t be scared by its red colour) and a rich beefiness. The beef chunks were tender, tasty, and plentiful, and the noodles, slightly alkaline, were perfectly tender and handmade in house.
Yan’s Signature Fried Dumplings 金牌虾肉三鲜锅贴 ($15.80) with pork and prawn and chive and egg were also quite good. The wrappers were very thin, allowing them to get super crispy on frying, with a bit of lace on one side to stick them together. The filling, four classical ingredients in Northern Chinese dumpling cuisine was tasty though ultimately still a few milimetres away from extra-ordinary.
The Pork Wonton Soup in chicken broth 鸡汤小馄饨($5.80) was the weakest of what we ordered. They were the kind that were predominately wrapper with only a small smattering of filling. We were asked if we wanted coriander, which of course we did, but I found the soup a bit soapy. I don’t know if these two things can be clinically correlated as I’m normally someone who loves coriander. Maybe it was the influence of the seaweed rather than the coriander? Either way, it was only about a third of the price of the other dishes, I guess not meant to be eaten on its own as a meal, and definitely not intended to be the star of the restaurant’s menu.
THOUGHTS It’s been a while since I have written that I could recommend a restaurant to a friend or colleague, but this place fits the bill.
This place was really hard to find, owing to the fact that their Google Maps location points to a different and completely unrelated dumpling restaurant, whose staff were at least gracious enough to point us in vaguely the right direction.
We started with some soy/tea eggs ($2 each), for which unfortunately the marinade had not penetrated into the yolk, leaving a tasty white with a boring hardboiled centre.
The Shepherd’s Purse & Pork Wonton Soup ($12.80) had a nice filling (though not particuarly better than the frozen dumplings I’ve been getting from the grocery store lately) as well as a nice wamrth and lightly salty umami flavour to the soup, but suffered from an unusual and unpleasant thickness in the wonton skin, making it more of a meal and a chore to eat this meal than a wonton soup should be.
Though I failed to capture a photo of the Dumplings of Pork & Chive ($12.80) apart from a single cross sectional shot, I much preferred these to the wontons. They had a strong chive flavour to them, which is really what you want and often can’t be replicated by the frozen stuff. The skin was again a bit thicker than ideal, but this was not as problematic as it was for the wontons.
I did not think I would enjoy the Steamed Pork and Sticky Rice Dumplings ($9.80), but they came out first after the eggs, and I guess I was hungry. I’m glad the sticky rice wasn’t too densely packed, because it was a real I heard you like carbs in your carbs so I put carbs in your carbs so you can carb while you carb moment.
The Honeyed Pork Ribs ($12.80) were good, meaty, tender and juicy, but very sweet and sticky.
Overall thoughts The price to performance ratio at JML Dumplings in Wolli Creek was good. I am a highly predictable rater, and any half decent pork and chive dumpling at a restaurant that offers them boiled will score high marks from me. Their menu is diverse, however, so even if you don’t like anything featured here there is probably something for you.
There’s this super odd row of restaurants on Liverpool Road in Ashfield where separate establishments named “New Shanghai Night”, “New Shanghai”, and “Shanghai Night” are lined up one after another. The subject of our review today is Shanghai Night, the Westernmost of the three.
The Shanghai Spicy Noodle Soup ($12.80) was good. It was quite a large serving for the price, and with plenty of meat and flavourful soup. Not too spicy. Not much else to say apart from a recommend.
The Si-Chuan Dry Wonton with Cucumber and Chilli Oil ($10.80) looked vastly different to the menu photo, but tasted pretty good. The wontons were plenty meaty, however my partner raised some concerns about the state of the peanut butter, which I did chose not to try.
The Steam Shanghai Style Mini Pork Bun ($8.80) were not the best. The most disappointing thing about them was the fact that they were mostly broken. In fact, only 2 out of the 8 were received intact, a feat that I can easily manage with a box of frozen xiao long bao at home.
THOUGHTS: With so many competitors in the Shanghai food space within a one metre radius, I don’t think I will be going back to this particular restaurant any time soon.
Shanghai Night 275 Liverpool Rd, Ashfield NSW 2131 (02) 9798 8437
As someone with limited calories in a day I suffer immensely from food-related indecision. One of my partner’s worst daily bugbears is my inability to decide where we’re going to eat, as I have both extremely high standards and a lack of willingness to cede control. Though Tianjin Shi Tang has been on my radar for a couple of years as a Tianjin-food devotee, multiple trips to the restaurant have been abandoned close to the mark after seeing negative reviews about them on Google. There have been several times where we have parked down the road, and I have made a last minute decision to go somewhere else.
Tian Jin Shi Tang is testament to the fact that Google reviewers don’t always know good food, and that sometimes risking it all on a 3.1 star restaurant with more 1-star reviews than 5-star reviews is worth it. Common complaints about food safety and worker ethic were not issues that we experienced, and in fact we had a very positive overall experience.
The thing I was most keen for was this jianbing guozi (chinese egg pancake) with smoked pork ($12.80). I think that jianbing is one of the key regional dishes of Tianjin that you have to try at any restaurant that offers it, and while I don’t remember the specific taste of any specific jianbing guozi that I had in China, what I can say is that every single one I’ve had in Sydney has been quite enjoyable, this one included. The base jianbing guozi at Tian Jin Shi Tang is $8.80, and though I’d never had it with a meaty filling before, the smoked meat filling (a $4 supplement) as recommended by one guy on Google who will be remembered as being on the right side of history was tasty, umami, and well worth it to put a spin on this classic dish. The lady serving us asked if I wanted chilli on it, and I must have said yes with just little enough conviction that she gave us only a little bit (stated as “less spicy” on our tax invoice). Overall this was not the traditional 煎饼馃子 that I’m used to, with the addition of smoked pork and with chilli sauce rather than sweet bean sauce (甜面酱), but still a delicious play on the concept.
The Tian Jin Wonton Soup ($8.80), pictured above in two almost identical photos chosen to put on show both wonton and soup facets of the dish, was a cheap and hearty breakfast bowl. Presented as a claypot filled with peppery soup, a crackled and slightly scrambled egg, seaweed, coriander, and small-type wontons, this is a dish that could easily form the staple of some late teen to early twenties Burwood high-rise dwelling international student. The meat filling, though relatively small compared to that of a dumpling, made up for its small size with its high density of meat and flavour, and numbered sufficiently to avoid sadness at the end of the meal (Danny Katz of the Sydney Morning Herald makes reference to the appropriate number of wontons in a bowl of wonton soup in the linked article, though this is not the Confucian wonton parable that I remember from my childhood). My only comment would be that this soup was far more peppery than I had anticipated – not overpoweringly so, it’s just that I didn’t expect white pepper to be the main flavour of the soup.
The pork and chive potstickers (12 for $14.80) were again very good. The dumplings and buns at Tian Jin Shi Tang are made fresh to order, and so we had no problems with the short 20 minute wait which we were pre-warned of whilst ordering, during which time we were eating the rest of our meal anyway. Though other online reviewers have complained about twenty minute waits for their food, we understand that fresh handmade food is something that takes time to get right, and I was actually quite impressed by the precision of the dumpling making process, watching the chef weigh out the filling for each individual dumpling, adding and subtracting as necessary as she made them in order to achieve the target ratios and weights. Though I would’ve preferred boiled dumplings (also available on the menu – a sign of self-confidence in a dumpling restaurant’s art) and any sort of order of pan-fried dumplings is usually the doing of my partner, I really did enjoy the freshly fried crispiness of the wrapper, as well as the juiciness of the filling within. These pork and chive dumplings had a bit more of a soy flavour and a stronger taste than I’m used to, but good all the same.
RETURN VISIT, JUNE 2024
The pork and chive steamed buns (8 for $13.80) were large and well priced, though we asked for pan fried ones and they must have misheard us. Very filling.
The zha jiang mien ($13.80) was a large portion, again well priced. The gravy of mince and stir fried bean paste was suitably tasty when mixed through the noodles, but of course too salty when eaten alone. This bowl came with some scramble-fried egg, which was soft and pillowy, and unexpected as I am not used to egg in my zha jiang mien. A recommend though.
COMMENTS Online reviews of Tian Jin Shi Tang are pretty well divided into lovers and haters of the place. Our experience was overwhelmingly positive, and I suspect that some of the difference in experience might be due to the fact that we went in the morning at 9:30AM but they’re open up until 1-2AM, which is a long time to keep up quality. We would not hesitate to go back.
Big respect also to a venue that gives a tax invoice for a cash purchase without being asked. It’s sad that operating a company that doesn’t steal from the rest of society is something to be praised, but where so many in the hospitality industry don’t do the right thing, it’s important to pay homage to the ones who do.
One intrepid Google Maps reviewer proclaimed Pho Mom the best pho restaurant in all of Canterbury, if only by virtue of it being the only pho restaurant in Canterbury. While I don’t personally know this Johnny Wong gentleman after paying Pho Mom a visit this past week I can certainly echo his sentiments.
The beef special pho ($18.50) came with the standard assortment of rare beef beef balls, and beef tripe, but to be honest apart from this I did not find it to be very special. The ingredients are all fresh and of good quality, but I found the soup to be somewhat one-dimensional, watery and generally lacking in depth of flavour. Perhaps it is merely personal preference, and you can browse the rest of blog to find what kinds of pho I do enjoy, but this bowl just didn’t do it for me.
Though I was let down by the pho, the fried wonton ($13) were a surprise hit. These were incredibly meaty and juicy inside, with good flavour as well as a good sweet and sour sauce for dipping on the side. This was pretty much just a random order, without big expectations, but they truly did impress.
The rice paper rolls ($13) were of good quality with soft rice paper and fresh ingredients inside, but what was really stand-out about these was the great peanut sauce. I’m also happy that we weren’t locked into choosing 4 of the same roll as the menu might suggest, and they were able to give us 2 of 2 different fillings. We had the prawn as well as the pork.
OVERALL I don’t think Pho Mom really lived up to the name of being the mother of all pho. I found their pho to be their weakest offering, but thought that they exhibited unexpected strength in other areas. Given that they’re just down the road from me, I wouldn’t hesitate to go back and try some of the other options on their menu, but given also our proximity to other high quality Vietnamese restaurants I don’t think I will go back just for pho.
