Mr Huang Jin

This blog has been the topic of several conversations over the past few weeks, including a not-so-subtle hint from my manager suggesting I take leave to write! I guess it's a timely reminder that I should get my act together and start doing something productive with the backlog of photos on my phone.

So let's talk food.

Mr Huang Jin is a modern take on Chinese/Taiwanese/Cantonese street food, with the occasional twist of South East Asia (for example, the laksa themed xiao long bao). Located on the ground floor of the Rialto building, the restaurant is clean, elegant and a complete contrast to the hustle and bustle of the night markets that traditionally sport a number of these dishes. 

Taiwanese fried chicken (TFC) w/ sweet chilli mayonnaise

One of the things I miss most about Taiwan is the street food, so seeing a list of 'Taiwanese tapas' on the menu is automatically a hit for me. Just like the Taiwanese fried chicken, which has a crispy, perfectly seasoned coating. The chicken itself is still juicy and tender. Paired with a tangy sweet chilli mayo, this chicken trumps popcorn chicken any day!

steamed pork xiao long bao

Up until I tried this place, Hutong was the only restaurant in Melbourne that really nailed the xiao long bao for me. These delicately wrapped Shanghainese dumplings match, if not surpass, the good old XLB of Hutong. The wrappy is thin but robust enough to hold in the soupy deliciousness that is required in any good XLB. Just one word of warning - handle with care, because you don't want it to explode and free the soup before you put it in your mouth.

prawn & pork wontons w/ chilli sauce

Now for a hit of spicy Sichuan goodness. Traditional wontons plump with chopped prawns and pork mince sit atop a numbing soy chilli oil concoction. Some crisp lettuce and sprigs of coriander scattered around the wontons provides a contrasting 'cooling' element in typical Chinese yin and yang style cooking. 

fried tofu balls

Another fried dish - this time, soft balls of silken tofu are crumbed and then deep fried. Crispy on the outside, melt in the mouth tofu on the inside. On their own, the tofu seems to lack flavour, but when eaten with the sweet and sour sauce on the side, or even just a squeeze of lemon, the dish comes together nicely. And, the balls are served with miniature skewers to prevent any potential for embarrassing chopstick mishaps. 

It's a bit of a walk from Docklands, but it's well worth the trek (so worth it, I've had two work lunches out there in the past month). 

The service is polite and not your typical Chinese dumpling joint. Have a big crowd? No worries, you can pre-order so that the dishes start coming out on your arrival, making it ideal for a quick work lunch.

Also worth a mention is the existence of gluten free versions of their dishes. Both the Taiwanese fried chicken and the tofu balls were ordered as gluten free and tasted no different to the non-gluten free versions on my second visit. It's rare to find an Asian restaurant that is so accommodating and yet still so reasonably priced. 

Overall Impression: 9/10

Guai Wei He [怪味合]

Location: 951 Whitehorse Road, Box Hill
Cuisine: Taiwanese

Tonight we decided to try out a new restaurant in Box Hill. No English name, 怪味合 (Guai Wei He) in Chinese. Literally translated as 'strange taste box'. Why so named? Because one of their signature dishes is the famous 怪味鸡 (chicken) that you get when you're in Taiwan.

The place operated a little like hotpot and Korean BBQ places. You choose a type of base pot (beef, prawn, crab, pork, lamb, mushroom, bean curd etc) and a type of sauce (seafood, special soy, curry, sweet and sour) and the waitress cooks it in front of you. Not quite Korean BBQ (not barbecued at all) and not like hotpot either (no soup base). More like a pressure cooker - the meat and vegies soak up the sauce. You can either eat this with rice, cold noodles or on its own. We ordered a half-lamb half mushroom pot with special soy sauce and half a signature chicken. The pot came with a few small kimchi like dishes.

The chicken was amazing - full of flavour and smelt and tasted a little smokey, like it had been cooked over a coal fire. The sauce it came with was quite tasty too, fairly salty, but smokey and sweet at the same time.

[signature 'strange tasting' chicken]

The pot itself came with a mix of carrots, onions and bean sprouts at the base, which were completely soaked with the sauce by the time the pot finished cooking. The lamb was tender, and there were plenty of different types of mushroom. Exciting stuff!

[mushroom and lamb pot]

Pricewise, it was rather cheap. The pot was a 4-person pot for $27 ($26 for lamb, $28 for mushroom), the half-chicken only $10. Along with two bowls of rice, our bill came to $39.

Creative, tasty and cheap!!

Overall rating: 9/10

Ten Ren Tea Time

Location: 146 Swanston Street [between Little Collins and Bourke Streets]
Link: www.tenrentea.com.au
Cuisine: Taiwanese
Company: Mel

After our unsatisfying meal at Equinox, Mel took me to a little Taiwanese place called Ten Ren for their 'crispy fried chicken'. At first I thought, crispy fried chicken? I might as well go to KFC, but then Mel explained to me that it was the famous Taiwanese fried chicken [盐酥鸡] and not typical KFC food so we ordered it [on the menu it's called 'spicy pepper chicken' even though it's not spicy at all].

The chicken was well flavoured, the batter itself appeared to have a very slight sweetness hidden in amongst the salt, pepper and other spices. The chicken itself was moist and full of flavour too. The chicken pieces were about the same size as KFC popcorn chicken, and we used toothpicks to eat it. For $4.80, we got more for our money than we had at Equinox!!

My second trip to Ten Ren was almost just as good. Having spotted oyster noodles and oyster omelette on the menu from the previous time, Mel and I went back to Ten Ren for lunch on day. I ordered the oyster noodles, which turned out reasonably decently, although cannot compete with the real stuff in Taiwan. It came with a free drink [ice/hot green/red/oolong tea]. Mel ordered a fried pork chop with rice, which also came with salad and fruit [a couple of pieces of watermelon] and for $1 extra, she got a pearl milk tea. The meals themselves were $8.80 each, which was ridiculously cheap for the amount of food Mel got! Lunchtime deals are very useful money savers!

I've still got a third trip planned to try the oyster omelette, and no doubt will be going back for the chicken again!!

Lotus and Bamboo

Location: Carrington Road, Box Hill
Cuisine: Chinese, Taiwanese
Company: family

Having been there once before and quite content with their service, we headed there again after my dad saw new hotpot specials in the Chinese newspaper.

~Food~
We ordered a 4-person banquet as well as a hotpot... which was definitely over-ordering! The banquet was good as they were flexible with changing some of the meals. We ended up with:

• Entrees of seaweed ties, fried tofu
• Sliced belly pork with bamboo shoots and tofu
• Shredded chicken salad
• Stewed fish
• Vegies
• Rice
• Hotpot with lamb and assorted vegies

The vegies were a little plain in my opinion, but the rest was quite good. The banquet was very well balanced with a good contrast in flavours, and alone would have been more than enough for us, but given we had also ordered the hotpot, we took a lot of it home.

The hotpot was considerably cheap for what we got, and as with any good hotpot, the soup at the end is absolutely amazing! The lamb was very thinly sliced, albeit a little too fatty (even for me). They actually sliced the corn into around 5mm slices, enabling it to cook much faster and making it more convenient to eat.

~Atmosphere and Service~
Being a Tuesday night, it was rather quiet. The atmosphere is casual, much like many of the small restaurants in Box Hill. The boss himself was out on the floor, and was very flexible with us altering the menu

~Price~
Very cheap for the amount of food there was. The banquet was $48, the hotpot $15. We also ordered two drinks at the end, bringing the bill to $65. Not bad considering what we took home lasted another meal!

~Overall Impression: 9/10~Will definitely be going back again for another cheap and quick feed! For a small restaurant, the food was much better than anticipated and the service was quite good too.