Tasty Eating House - 480 Anzac Parade, Kingsford

My husband and I decided to head to Wang Wang Shanghai Silver Star for some much craved for dumplings and cheap tasty Chinese, but it was closed!  So we walked around up Anzac Parade and most of the little restaurants looked too busy but then we stumbled upon Tasty Eating House.  It looked relatively new and there were some tables still available despite being a busy Sunday night. 

 

It was definitely a good looking menu with traditional dishes not seen very often.  This is what we ate:

 

 

 

Sweet Corn and Chicken Soup - this was a pretty big bowl for only $4.50!  It was a good consistency but the longer you leave it the wateriness starts to prevail.  I didn't want to fill up on soup before our other dishes came! 7.5/10

 

 

 

Hot and Sour Soup - I love this soup but whoa! This was very, very peppery! It was hot in that sense not chilli hot if you know what I mean. It was yummy but not sour enough. This soup really gets the taste buds jumping! Slightly better than what Wang Wang Shanghai Silver Star serves up.   Again this is only $4.50. 7.5/10

 

 

 

Double Cooked Pork Belly Slices with Chilli, $13.80 - Mmmm this was so good!  The pork sprinkled with chilli flakes was sliced really thin with a lot of fat, as you can see.  All coated in soy sauce and the hot chilli flavour.  If 10 was the hottest, this only is 6.  If you don't like fat then don't get this dish.  The string beans were a good addition to the fattiness.  9/10!

 

 

 

Assorted Mushrooms with Bok Choy.  The sauce wasn't too thick and seasoning perfect.  I love enoki mushrooms, but shitakes are definitely my favourite mushroom in Chinese cuisine.  I  can't remember how much this was but it was a huge serving for just the two of us.  But don't worry, we finished all of it! 

 

Growing up with my mum cooking a few dishes every night and eating them all with plain white rice, one of those dishes she cooked had to be a vegetable dish, or "choy" as we say.  So whenever we go out for Chinese I always have to have a plate of "choy".  I suppose it balances out all the meat or fried dishes we have.  It just makes the Chinese meal complete. 

 

Definitely another great find in Kingsford with a lot more dishes I have to go back and try. Service was great, quick and attentive and best of all the food was very affordable and very tasty, so a name very apt.

 

 

Wokking Inn - 282 North Road, Eastwood

Gung Hei Fat Choy!  Happy Chinese New Year!  It's the first day of the year of the snake and so I think it is only apt to write about another new Chinese restaurant my family and I dined at.  Despite it also being Mercedes Benz Fashion week in New York.  I would love to share some pics of that but it's fair to say that my food posts outweigh the fashion and also get more reads. . . .  So here is a review of this awesome little restaurant in Eastwood.

We wanted to go here at the end of last year but it was closed for renovation so we went here for my sister's and auntie's birthday a few weeks ago.  My mum knows the owner Helen and knew that they had some pretty awesome entrees and dishes that we had to pre-order.  We didn't want to miss out on the night!

 

Mango and Prawn Spring Rolls, $60. This was the pre-ordered house special entree. It was special indeed! The pastry was really light and crispy kind of like roti bread but the deep fried version and a little sweet but had some salt sprinkled lightly on top. The dipping sauce was mango puree. They were very generous in size, one per person, although I could've eaten 2!

 

You had to see the inside, nice big juicy prawns and fresh mango slithers with a subtle white sauce which was a Chinese style mornay sauce? Kind of.  The mango inside was sweet enough you didn't really need the sauce. 9/10.

 

 

Dried Scallop Poached Chicken, $38.  This was another pre-ordered dish.  It is a course that is served cold.  The display of the whole head always causes a stir amongst us young ones, so my brother covers it with the coriander but to our amusement our Grandad unknowingly eats the coriander and the head is revealed again!!!  Aargh!  Anyway I like this dish cold, it makes it more of a summer dish.  The chicken and soy sauce is flavoured with other spices and is a different take on the Shaoxing wine drunken chicken dish we always have.  7/10.

 

 

Pippies in XO sauce served with crispy vermicelli noodle pancake.  I love this dish although pippes are not the meatiest of sea foods, this dish makes up for it in flavour.  The sauce is thick and salty and the vermicelli noodles are used to mop up this. The best bits are the cripsy edges which always get eaten quickly. 9/10.

 

8 Treasure Whole Duck, $78.  This was the piéce de resistancé!  The dish was massive.  It was so different to anything I have ever eaten in a Chinese restaurant before.  The waitress had cut into the duck before I could snap it unscathed.  The body of the duck was so soft and I was like c'mon what is this? It had no bones and was so so soft to cut up!  The skin was soft and the treasures inside were all so soft as well.  It must have been slowly cooking for ages.  The meat was so tender and flavoursome.  The stuffing comprised of water chestnut, shitake mushrooms, Chinese sausage, lotus root and some other ingredients which I don't know.  The duck was surrounded by baby buk choy which made it a more visually pleasing dish.  8/10.

 

Sweet and Sour Pork.  Always a favourite.  The sourness builds the appetite.  The sweet cuts into the fatty bits of pork, which weren't too fatty at all.  The batter was light and crispy.  The addition of pinenuts was new.  Delicious.  8/10.

 

Chilli Soft Shell Crab.  This was my choice.  The little crabs were yummy and the batter which I was expecting to be really hot as it had three chilies next to the dish on the menu wasn't as hot as I wanted it to be despite the dish being covered with a variety of chillies.  It was a generous sized dish though.  7/10.

 

 

Re-hydrated scallops with enoki mushrooms and snow pea sprouts.  The vegetable dish of the night served in a broth which was unusual. The scallops were subtle tasting but added a nice saltiness to the veges.  7/10.

 

All these dishes were eaten with white rice and we were so full by the end as there was so much food, the servings were big.   We all got a take-away container for our lunches the next day!  Yay!

 

Wokking Inn is a hidden jem.  It is quite expensive compared to the other local Chinese restaurants I go to in the suburbs, but it's also a great change of the style of Chinese we are used to.  All up it was $360 for 10 people which is very reasonable by Sydney standards but twice the amount for a regular Chinese suburban meal.

 

Fook Yuen Seafood Restaurant - 7 Help Street, Chatswood

It was my Mum's birthday a few weeks ago and to keep it  traditional we went for Chinese at the long standing Fook Yuen restaurant.   We hadn't been here for quite a few years and thought we'd go there for a change.  It is a big restaurant and reminds me of Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong.  They are decorated quite ornately in a deep red colour with dark wooden chairs and big tables with lazy susans on each.  The service is also reminiscent of those restaurants too as there is a waiter that brings the food to the table and another waiter to serve it individually for you.  It's great!  Dad gets a rest tonight! 

First up is the free pork soup.  A clear broth of pork bones and greens with some other Chinese herbs/berries that I don't know the name of.  All Chinese soups are supposed to be healthy and help some organ or function of your body.  This soup was really refreshing and just the right amount of saltiness.  Usually they can be a bit watery. 8/10.

First entree was deep fried school prawns.  I hadn't eaten prawns like this for a while and they were  just delicious.  The heads were crunchy but I did have to make sure I chewed very well before swallowing as I was scared to have some pointy prawn leg scratch my throat.  The chunks of garlic and chilli coated the prawns along with a really thin coating of batter.   It could've done with a another minute in the oil.  7.5/10.

Second entree was steamed scallops with ginger, shallots and coriander.  One of my all time seafood dish faves.  My two little round plump morsels of scallopy goodness are hidden somewhere under all that greenry and shreds of ginger.  I was hoping the scallops would be a bit bigger, but they still tasted amazing.  What makes everything work is the sweet light soy.  I love this entire combo.  I could eat a dozen!  7.5/10.

Pippis in XO sauce with vermicelli.  This is truly a delicious and hearty dish.  The pippis are in abundance and eating them with the soft and crispy bits of vermicelli and chilli makes it a dish I could eat every week.  This is when I actually like the consistency of "Chinese" gravy.  8/10. 

First part of this fresh fish dish.  It is coral trout stir-fired with sugar snap peas, Chinese chive, carrot and ginger.  The fish is quite a hard fish and has what I would say a medium strength of fishiness flavour.  This dish is served with oyster sauce on the side which you just spoon on a little at a time on the chunks of fish.  The sugar snaps are crunchy as and I love Chinese chive, it adds another level to the dish.  7.5/10.

The second part of the dish is all the yucky bits of the fish,  fish maw steamed, which are tasty but not my cup of tea.  This is mostly Dad's dish.  I did eat a piece of the tofu though, again this is a dish with the yummy sweet light soy sauce.  This, I spoon all over my white steamed rice which we are all eating with our dishes.  5/10.

Spinach and shitake mushrooms.  This is quite a generous sized vege dish.  The mushrooms are soft and intense with shitake flavour.  The spinach is quite light in taste but with the sauce it's a good version of a standard dish. 6/10.

This is deep fried tofu.  I would call it an Asian tofu fritter.  It has Chinese sausage inside and bits of mushroom and shallots.  The tofu is soft and fluffy inside and the batter is very very light and crispy on the outside.  Again this dish comes with dipping sauce which I forgot to take a pic of.  It is a gravy consistency mostly made of oyster sauce and cornflour.  My sister loves this dish and we always get it and this one is quite a good rendition of it.  I only had one, they went pretty quickly.  8.5/10.  

Black pepper stir fried beef.  Chunks of beef stir fried with lots and lots of black pepper, mushrooms and sugar snap peas.  The beef was nice and tender, I was getting pretty full but I ate quite a bit of this anyway as I love black pepper.  8/10.

Dessert is this sweet red bean soup.  A common dessert in Chinese restaurants, again this is free.  So all you non Chinese diners should always ask for the free soup and dessert at dinner time if you don't do so already.  This dessert was bordering on the watery side.  I like this red bean dessert when it's a bit thicker.  5.5/10.

We also got a plate of biscuits.  I didn't eat any as I was full and I find these a bit dry. 

You should definitely try Fook Yuen if you are on the North side to experience some fine Chinese fare with matching service that you don't usually find elsewhere.

Taste of Shanghai - 200 Rowe Street, Eastwood

Another family dinner and yes we are on a roll, trying out another new restaurant!  The occasion was to celebrate the Chinese Mid-Autumn Moon Festival.  My whole life I have been celebrating this with a family dinner but hey do I know what exactly this festival is about?  No.  I ashamedly Googled this.  In summary,  it means to celebrate the moon as it is at it's biggest and fullest. This is on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month which is usually in October.  There is a love story behind it but you can look this up yourself it's a bit too long winded for me to tell here.

Ok, so we are back on the dumpling eating track.  Hand-made dumplings skillfully created in-house by these Chinese ladies.  Hundreds of them!  We got three types this time. . . 

Xiao Long Bao $8.80 - My favourite ones.  These came out in an industrial steel steamer and were seriously good.  Lots of soup which when I ate mine accidentally sprayed over the table as I didn't close my mouth fully enough.  Well, that was because it was so bloody hot!  The pork filling had just the right amount of saltiness as did the broth.   This time I didn't have any chilli with these ones only a dash of the dark vinegar.  8/10.

Pan Fried Pork Buns with Sesame $8.80 - These are a  bit more unusual and are much more doughier.  It is as the description says,  like a mini pork bun you get at yum-cha but pinched into a little dome rather than the open puffy cloud the Char Siu Bao's are.  Again these have the same filling and soup combo.  I added chilli to this one as there was more dough to it.  It's amazing how the soup just sits inside and doesn't get soaked up.  7.5/10

Pan Seared Pork Dumpling $9.80 - The Chinese name for these are War Tip.  I know,  funny phonetic translation but it's for real.  These are also a goody that you always get at yum-cha.  But these ones here are much bigger and have heaps more pork/chive mixture inside.  No soup in these, just the crispy thin dough and meat.  Love these coated in lots of chilli and vinegar.  8/10 

Braised Pork Belly with Fresh Steamed Buns - This dish is one of my all time favourite Chinese pork dishes.  I don't eat it often so this was a treat and boy was it tasty.   It's full of thin slices of pork belly in a rich kind of salty, vinegary sauce.  I didn't copy down the price or exact dish name but it's got bits of preserved cabbage underneath as well.  You have to mop up all the salty sauce with the sweet super soft bun, it's so good!  This one of my Dad's favourites also but my Mum hates it as it's so fatty.  9/10.  

Kung Po Chilli Chicken $15.80 - Bits of tender chicken stir-fried with red hot chillies, shallots and peanuts. Not sure how they get that hot stickiness of powerful sauce but this is a simple but great flavoured dish. 6.5/10.

Eggplant and pork mince in sweet chilli vinaigrette sauce $14.80 - This dish was my least favourite as it was too vinegary.  My Mum makes this way better.  Eggplant was nice and soft but yeah we were all a bit disappointed with this version.  4/10.

Live Barramundi in Sweet and Sour sauce $32.80 - This is one of the house specials and it did not disappoint.  They brought this little barra out to show us flapping away in a plastic bag to get our approval before being deep fried and coated in this lovely thick sauce and plonked on our table.  It really is a taste sensation.  The flesh is still juicy not dry and the sweetness and sourness of the sauce does not overpower at all.  Sweet and sour sauce is a flavour that enhances your appetite, this is what my Mum says and it's true.  I could just eat plain rice with some of this sauce as a complete meal if I had to, it's that good.  8.5/10.

Stir-fried Snow Pea Sprouts with Mushrooms $15.80 - As usual we have to order a vegetable dish.  You need a cleaner dish in amongst all these strong flavours.  I love these sprouts cooked this way.  6/10.

Braised Beef Fillet in Chilli Broth - This was my pick as I wanted to try something different.  Again not sure of the actual dish ingredients or name but it was packed with chilli seeds yet wasn't that hot.  If 10 was the mother of all hotness then this would only be a 3 I reckon.  In amongst this soupiness was the tender beef bits and to our surprise it also had vermicelli noodles underneath to help soak up some of that yummy sauce.  It was wierd though as they only gave you a slotted spoon and not a ladle as well as I would've drank more of it this for sure! . . Well mixed in with my rice and I could've made a chilli sauce congee!  Haha.  8/10.

This place was packed and lots of people waiting, so I suggest booking in advance, but make sure you check over the details with the person on the phone as they thought our booking was for the night before!  So we had to wait!

I would recommend Taste Of Shanghai if you want different Chinese food.   The prices are very reasonable.  If you aren't close to Eastwood there are other branches in the City World Square, Chatswood and Ashfield.