Sea Bay, Sydney CBD

As mentioned in my Saap Thai post, I really wanted to check out Sea Bay, as it was recommended by a friend who said they sell cheap dumplings. Sea Bay is a slightly dingy Chinese eatery, but if you're familiar with the ones in Kingsford, you'll be too used to this kind of diner to care too much about the decor, ambience or apparent cleanliness. In this second attempt at entering the premises, we managed to score the last table and were squeezed into a corner.

One thing I was pleased about was the generous portion of chilli oil & flakes, as it's not something generally done in Sydney. The dishes were prepared quickly and came out piping hot.

The first thing I launched myself at was the plate of pan fried meat dumplings. I liked the crunch of the dumpling skin, but when I reached the meat inside, it was evident that the cook had gone wild with the salt.

Pan fried dumplings (meat) ($10.80)

 Secondly, I tried the bean noodle soup - not making the connection that bean noodles are mung bean noodles (which I adore). It was surprising to find tomatoes in the soup, but the mushrooms were standard. I can't say too much about it - tasty but not particularly memorable (and at least it wasn't as salty as the dumplings).

Mushroom and vegetable soup with bean noodles ($10.80)

  Just as with the pan fried dumplings, the boiled dumpling filling was too salty. The effect was perhaps not as bad because the skin hadn't had as much contact with salt as the pan fried skin. The meat they used was the same as the meat in the pan fried dumplings (we didn't get to choose the meat for the boiled dumpling, so the filling was a surprise).

Boiled dumplings ($10.80)

  In conclusion, my dislike of Sea Bay isn't the ear-drum-bursting lunch crowd, or the fact that they've crammed as many chairs and tables as possible into each square metre (making it virtually impossible to get in or out where you're sitting back to back), or that despite these things it's still an immense challenge to get a table. My aversion towards Sea Bay is much more basic than that.

They just need to hold off on the sodium chloride.