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.

Shanghai Stories 1938, Chatswood

I'd been meaning to check out Shanghai Stories for a while ever since The Concourse was completed, as I was curious as to how it stood up against its New Shanghai competitors. However, I never quite got around to it until recently.

So I made a booking and attempted to navigate myself to the restaurant, which was a slightly awkward ordeal. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Shanghai Stories takes up both the top and bottom storeys (Get it? Storeys??) - despite the bottom resembling a Chinese fast food diner - and I had made my way directly towards the stairs, not realising that the podium that they very inconspicuously placed on the side of the entrance was intended to be the first point of contact for patrons. I was eventually ushered to my table, which was squashed into a corner.

The style of the restaurant is in between your typical dumpling house and a 'proper', more expensive, Chinese restaurant like Kam Fook or Fook Yuen. I think the picture below of the plastic fans and the unattended collection of dirty crockery amidst the neat decor summarises this fairly accurately.

Upper storey

Anyway, on to the food:

The meat dishes are largely proportioned (think Chinese restaurant banquet sizes) so we decided to order 3 items off the menu and refrained from having rice.

First up was the salt and pepper calamari, which was garnished with dried chilli and deep fried onions. The texture of the calamari was a bit hit and miss - there were some very tough pieces but there were some also fairly tender bits, too.The fried onions gave the calamari batter an extra crunchiness which was greatly appreciated. Though salty, the calamari was not too salty - though we would probably have been better off eating it with rice to balance out the flavours.

Salt and pepper calamari ($22.80)

The next to arrive was the Taiwanese three cup chicken. It was presented in a steaming clay pot and served with plenty of chopped onions. The sauce was tasty and the chicken was tender - though I recall there was also a lot of fat, but some people prefer that. Overall it was not bad.

Taiwanese three cup chicken ($18)

The last to arrive was a chilli oil dumpling dish. I would have liked more sauce - and perhaps for the chilli oil to contain actual chilli flakes rather than just... oil. It wasn't bad, but you have to eat the dumplings really quickly, or else they get cold, dry and a little tough.

Poached pork and vegetable dumpling in chilli oil x 10 ($8.80)

Conclusion: Hit and miss

New Shanghai, Chatswood Chase

In my previous post about New Shanghai in Lemon Grove, I vowed to also review the one located in Chatswood Chase. Nevertheless, I will try to make the post brief, as I do not wish to sound repetitive.

Although they belong to the same franchise, the two branches of New Shanghai are operated quite differently - made evident by their overall presentation. The Chatswood Chase branch is more upmarket, playing on ambience and (of course) higher prices.

We were a fairly large group and wanted to have dinner around 7.30pm. They don't take bookings, so when we found that it was already full, we had to wait for about half an hour.

Waiting for a table...

Just as with the staff in Lemon Grove, the English spoken is very basic - we had someone with peanut allergies who wanted more information, and it was quite difficult extracting whether or not they use peanut oil (no, they don't. They explicitly state which dishes contain peanut).

The scope of menu caters to westernised taste-buds - as seen below, they offer dishes like spring rolls and salt and pepper squid.

Tea is not free, unlike the one in Lemon Grove. Since it just felt wrong paying for Chinese tea, I opted for the taro milk tea, which was thick and refreshing - quite a novelty as I don't recall the Lemon Grove branch offering a wide range of drinks.

Taro milk tea

 One of the first things to arrive was the string bean dish. It was pretty salty, contained a lot of garlic and the beans tasted slightly old, but when eaten with the other dishes made a good garnish. The Shanghainese noodles were (as usual) somewhat tasteless and lacking in something (like chilli oil). The rest of the dishes were fairly standard,

Stir fried string bean with dried shrimps and soy sauce ($12.80)

Salt and pepper calamari

Pan fried pork buns x 8 ($9.90)

The pan fried pork buns are fairly similar in taste to the one in Lemon Grove, but these ones were soggier and not as crisp.

Spring rolls

Fried chicken

They gave us the bonier parts - there was plenty of meat, but it meant that it wasn't as dry as what you would expect from chicken breast.

Overall, New Shanghai in Chatswood Chase bears strong similarities to the Lemon Grove branch. However, they charge you for tea, the dishes are pricier, the quality of the food (based on making comparisons between dumplings) is lower, and the menu is less 'Asian'.

Chinese Dumpling and Noodle House, Kingsford

I'd heard from a few people that there are a couple of fabulous dumpling eateries in Kingsford, and that the Chinese Dumpling and Noodle House ('CDNH') was one of them - that, in fact, Kylie Kwong recommended eating there. Just like the other Asian eateries around the area, CDNH is extremely casual and pretty much like your local Chinese takeaway shop. The portions are generous, the prices very low, and the flavours a bit hit and miss. CDNH's facade itself is pretty inconspicuous, blending in amongst its competitors, so look out for the big red sign.

Facade

The waitresses' grasp of English is limited (I've experienced a mix-up of our order), but their service is polite and attentive. If you go there at lunch time on a quiet day, you'll probably see the staff (cooks included) laying out a banquet for themselves and chatting amicably.

Interior

The dumpling prices range from $4.50 to $11, depending on the type of dumpling and the portion. If you're looking for big portions, the boiled and steamed dumplings are the way to go - with plates of 14 - 16 dumplings for $8 - $10. Personally, I'm not a big fan of their dumplings. There's something lacking in taste - the fillings seem to consist of the same meat (despite ordering dumplings with different fillings) and they lack salt, consequently making them taste quite bland. On the plus side, they seem to add very little or no MSG, since I don't feel thirsty after each visit.

Menu - dumpling section

 I'll commence my dish-by-dish break down with the pan-fried three fresh delicacies dumplings. The filling is firm, quite patty-like, and somewhat dry - unlike other Shanghainese dumplings that I've had, there is no hot soup stock inside to tantalise the tongue. The dumpling skin is thin, soft and resembles boiled wonton skin. I would have preferred a more caramelised bottom - as you can see, they aren't very golden brown. As mentioned before, it lacks flavour, but it tastes and feels homemade.

Pan fried three fresh delicacies dumplings [pork, prawn, egg] x 12 ($9.50)

We tried one of their steamed dumpling dishes with a chicken filling, and apart from the limp texture of the dumpling skin, it was pretty much identical to the pan fried dumplings above. We suspected they got our order wrong, but we didn't know for sure.

Steamed dumplings [Northern style/ chicken] x 7 ($4.80)

Surprisingly, the pan fried bun tasted significantly better than the other dumplings. - probably because they contained more salt than the previous two. There was no soup inside (again), but the bottoms were a bit more toasted.

Pan fried bun x 6 ($8.00)

 I've also tried a few of their noodles. Their black pepper noodles with capsicum and onion are outstanding, particularly if you choose to have them with udon noodles (as opposed to rice noodles). There's a choice between beef and chicken, and both meats are cooked well - tender and succulent.

Stir fried udon noodle with beef in black pepper ($8.80)

Stir fried udon noodle with chicken in black pepper ($8.80)

I've also tried their Hokkien noodles with beef, which tastes similar to the black pepper noodles. Though tasty, the black pepper noodles are still the best.

Stir fried Hokkien noodles with beef ($8.80)

In summary:
- Cheap
- If you must have dumplings, eat the pan fried buns
- The black pepper noodles are recommended

New Shanghai, Lemon Grove, Chatswood

New Shanghai in Lemon Grove is one of my favourite haunts in Chatswood, even compared to its dolled up sister in Chatswood Chase. In this post I will focus on the Lemon Grove branch without launching into a dissertation of the reasons why this branch should be preferred to the other. So onwards I will go...

The Lemon Grove version has been designed to look like a typical casual Chinese restaurant - tiles on the floor, lots of lighting, and quite basic decor. The place is clean, though, and when it comes to this sort of cuisine, that is often all I expect. In a similar design to Chef's Gallery in the city, New Shanghai displays the dumpling folding process through glass windows at opposite ends of the restaurant, which is pretty interesting to watch.

The lunch crowd tends to make the place packed by 1pm, so if you want to check New Shanghai out during lunch time, you're better off grabbing a table earlier - especially if you intend to bring friends, as the chatter from other tables carries and makes it difficult to hold a conversation. When I took the above photos, it was around noon (maybe a bit earlier, even).

Over the years, I've discovered what they make well consistently and what they're not very good at delivering.

Things to AVOID (and general negatives):

• Anything with cold noodles and peanut sauce
• Shanghai style noodles IF you like your noodles spicy - it looks like there are chili flakes in the photos but they brush it off as part of the lighting. You can try asking them to add XO sauce, but based on experience they won't do it for you.
• Crab xiao long bao: strong seafood/ fishy taste (not the good kind)
• They don't provide serving utensils
• There is no chili oil
• Waitstaff have limited English - when ordering, I would advise you to stick to reading out the numbers. It can also be difficult to get their attention.
• They charge you for takeaway boxes (but they're something like $0.20 per box so it's not a big deal).
• Quite a lot of MSG - you feel really thirsty afterwards

So enough about the cons! It's not all bad. For one, tea is 100% free.


The pan fried pork buns (number 205 on the menu) are by far my favourite New Shanghai dumplings. They come out piping hot with lots of soup inside, which means I can employ my favourite technique of:

1. Chomping off the top part,
2. Drinking the soup and
3. Devouring everything else.

 The base of the buns are crisp, while the dough is fairly thick (which I know some Chinese dislike, but I like my buns doughy). They come as a serving of 8 - as you can see below, someone snatched a bun before I could take a photo.

Pan fried pork bun x 8 pieces ($9.20)

 Next on my list of favourites is the pan fried pork dumpling (207), which taste similar to the pan fried pork buns, but are crunchier due to their crescent shapes. They also contain less soup, which is great for the beginner dumpling eaters out there!

Pan fried pork dumpling x 8 ($9.20)

How can you go to a Shanghainese restaurant and not order shallot pancakes? I certainly can't resist. At New Shanghai, they're pretty thick, but they're crisp and not tough at all. They're located in the dumpling section as number 208.

Shallot pancake ($5.20)

 Moving on to the steamed dumplings, we have the steamed mini pork buns (xiao long bao), which is 201 on their menu. As with the pan fried pork buns, you have to be careful when eating these because the soup can squirt out and hit your neighbour (or if you're eating with your worst enemy, feel free to be careless).

Steamed mini pork buns x 8 ($7.20)

By now, you're probably thinking that all the dumplings must taste the same, except for the different textures depending on how they're cooked. You would be right - mostly. I present to you the pork and coriander dumplings (217)! As someone who doesn't like coriander, believe me when I say that you must try these. The coriander is a refreshing ingredient to all the pure pork fillings and it's so easy to pop one after another into your mouth.

Pork and coriander dumplings x 12 ($8.20)

Another thing they make pretty well is the steamed pork and mushroom with stick rice dumpling dish (number 212). It's not what I order every visit, but it's soft, steamed and full of rice, which is a nice change to the other dumplings.

Steamed pork and mushroom with sticky rice x 6 ($8.20)

So there you have it! Great dumplings at a pretty great price.