Wooden Bowl, Korean/Chinese, Strathfield

The Boulevarde in Strathfield offers an amazing range of restaurants... admittedly mostly Korean.  Today we wanted to try a different one, with mixed results.

Chinatown Dumpling Restaurant, Melbourne CBD

Spicy Chicken Noodles

There are so many dumpling places around it's hard to spot the difference.  Chinatown Dumpling Restaurant in a great location on Swanston Street and great food too.  The frontage is narrow but the restaurant is deep with seats in every possible possie.  We were lucky enough to score a table at 7pm on a Saturday night.  Within minutes the place was full.

The spicy chicken in hand made noodles was hearty and generous.  While tasty, it didn't go overboard on stronger spices like cumin or chilli for that matter. It was still authentic to its north-western Chinese origins.

Beef steamed dumplings

The beef steamed dumplings were a highlight too.  Dumpling casing was a little thicker and stronger than I'm used to, but for me, was perfect for a cold Melbourne evening.  So too was the beef filling, coarser, fuller and thicker mince gave this dish a much greater footprint and also very much to my taste.

The staff were young, efficient and fast. Price was very reasonable around $30 for both of us.  Highly recommended - if you can get a seat.

New Shanghai Chinese, Ashfield

Although I was dying to go back to Shanghai Food House, we thought we should try somewhere different and so headed into New Shanghai... which was literally next door.

While our order was pretty standard for us, we did try something new - Shandong Shredded Chicken to be precise, which was melt in your mouth delicious.  The skin is particularly tasty.  Although the chilli wasn't very hot.

The other dishes were standard orders for us, pork dumplings (above), and my favourite dish at this restaurant, garlic cucumber (below); it looks plain but the crispy cucumber in sweet vinegar and sesame oil garlic sauce was divine.

The fried noodles weren't bad either, although I prefer next door's for this dish and the pork dumplings.

Overall, the meal was pretty good value, less than $40 for the two of us.

Dumplings and buns

It must have been such a strange thing when you encounter Asian dumplings and buns for the first time.  I grew up loving Vietnamese steam buns, which is basically the same as Chinese bbq buns, but we put alot more ingredients inside, like pork mince, peas, even vermicelli!

We ate lunch at Shanghai Food House in Ashfield today where you can see the amazing range of buns and dumplings, meat and vegetarian.. even ones with chives in the outer pasty.  As you can see above a vegetarian bun is only $1.20!

Or what about the steamed dumplings and buns below that you eat with dark soy or vinegar and chilli paste.

Or the various fried versions some with and some without filling... delicious!!!!

All these dumplings and buns were available at Shanghai Food House.