Dumpling Den @ Grattan St

Dumpling Den

Here comes the term break. So I have one week break and basically my plans for this holiday is to take this opportunity to study and catch up with my assignments. Oh, and of course I will spend some time food hunting as well haha. So tonight I tried 2 places with my friend. One of them is Dumpling Den, the chinese dumpling restaurant along Grattan St in Carlton, and after that we went for dessert at N2 Extreme Gelato in Brunswick St. Stay tuned I will make a review about N2 Extreme Gelato shortly after this post. So for now let's focus on some dumpling action!

So, the name tells it all - Dumpling Den, so we expect the signature dish here is dumplings, well to be precise, Chinese style dumplings. We decided not to have a heavy meal so as we dig in the menu, we decided to order 2 dishes to share among the 2 of us. Staff were friendly and quickly took our order of 1 Special Fried Rice and 1 serve of Steamed Pork Dumplings (12pcs). I normally don't put high expectations on chinese dumplings as I personally do no like their strong ginger taste and juicy filly, but however, never try never know, so give we gave it a try. The waiting time was quite long, took around 20 minutes if not mistaken until the Special Fried Rice was served.

Special Fried Rice

Firstly I would like to ask you guys about your opinion about this dish just by looking at it. What comes into your mind straight away? Well for both of us, our first thought was "WALAO!!!Got apa special about it??!!!" Yes the special fried rice doesn't look special at all and as I took a spoonful and tasted it, it proved us correct. There is seriously nothing special about it and it tasted just like what an average home cooked fried rice would taste like, and sometimes home cook fried rice taste even better. The ingredients used were barely simple like frozen vege, a TINY amount of shrimps, chinese sausage and eggs, and maybe some light soy sauce and MSG. I personally would think that if you are going to call your dish "Special Fried Rice", mate you better make an effort to at least make your dish taste special or at least not something we can easily cook at home. So definitely not worth it.

Steamed Pork Dumplings

The dumplings on the other hand took longer until it was served. By looking at it the skin reminded me of the "Har Gao" which is the local pork dumplings I had back home in Kuching. I took a bite of the pork dumpling and to my surprise, it was too juicy which is unlike those dumplings that will have juice oozing out of them as you bite them, and you end up making a mess because you've got the juice spraying all over your face and clothes. These ones are totally different. There's no juice in them and yet they are not dry at all. I love them and the ginger taste wasn't too strong for me. Definitely loving it! So that's a thumbs up for the steamed pork dumplings. Simple dinner that costed us $20. Stay tuned for review on N2 Extreme Gelato!

Photography by Canon EOS 7D with Sigma 30mm f/1.4

Craving for Malaysian Food Satisfied

So in craving for some good Malaysian food lately. To be specific, had been craving for Hainanese Chicken Rice and Wanton Mee these few days. So went to two different places to satisfy my craving today. Firstly, PapaRich at QV. I hardly go there as to be honest the food there is expensive yet tasted not that good. There's always an exception to everything, and it is the Papa Chicken Rice which is actually Hainanese Chicken Rice.

Teh C Peng Special (3 Color Milk Tea)

Before the main meal, to start with I had the Teh C Peng special. Normally this is what Malaysians miss as it is a very popular drink back home. The drink was alright I would like it thicker though.

Papa Chicken Rice

Now to the main attraction, normally this is what I will order and this only whenever I come to Papa Rich. Their chicken is the one that I can find which taste almost the same as what I can get back home, though there's still quite some difference, it is the best I can find here. One thing that I really like about it is that there's coriander on the chicken and coriander to me makes a big difference to the dish because of it's awesome fragrance. Besides that, the chilli sauce is very nice, just not spicy enough. For us Malaysians, chicken rice without good chilli sauce is not considered as chicken rice. That is how important the quality of the chilli sauce it. The chicken was nicely steamed and the skin was very chewy and slippery. The gravy was very appetising as well. Furthermore, the soup was very nice and yet it is not dead salty. So overall I love this dish!

Beef and Chicken Mix Satay

Haha just something that caught our eye when looking through the menu. Long time I hadn't been eating any satay, even when I was back in Malaysia for semester breaks, I can't recall having any satay. The satay at Papa Rich was alright, not the best ones I tried but was quite good. The satay sauce was okay as well however I would once again prefer it to taste thicker and more spicy.

So that was lunch. Dinner today was at Shophouse Kitchen also at QV. I ordered the BBQ Pork and Fried Wantan Noodles with Sichuan Sauce Base.

BBQ Pork and Fried Wantan Noodles

So called "Wantan Mee" is a typical west Malaysian hawker dish. Since I'm from East Malaysia I hardly ever eat something like this back home, it is just not mee. However as I was watching some hawker food show on YouTube last night, I craved for it and the only place that I can think of to satisfy my craving is Shophouse Kitchen. I've been there a lot of times but I never ordered this dish before, so today I was "brave" enough to try it out. When I ordered it, in my mind it went like "I will never order something like this again here if it turned out to be bad". To my surprise, I really really loved it. I chosen the Sichuan Spicy sauce base and it went well with the noodles and everything. The noodles was not lumped and did not stick together which is a very important aspect to this dish. The noodles had a good taste too. I tried a few similar dishes where to noodles was just tasteless. The BBQ pork had a nice "BBQed" taste and was not too sweet. Now for the fried wantan or fried pork dumplings, usually I get sick of them after 1 or 2 because those I tried mostly were just plain oily and tasteless. However today it was really awesome. I can feel the meat inside and I was surprised there were prawns in there too. After having the 3 fried wantans I literally wanted for more. Just an awesome dish.

Photography by Samsung Galaxy Note II.