Don’t get me wrong, I love the restaurant Shanghai Night, but my husband loves it even more than me and possibly more than most of their customers. Every time I suggest going to a new restaurant, he always pipes up with “What about Shanghai Night?” with a plaintive puppy dog eyed look. He even asked to be taken here for his birthday in favour of other, more “special occasion” restaurants.
What is quite so loveable about this decor challenged, brightly lit busy shanghai eatery? The Dumplings of course! Luckily our friends Miss America & Queen Viv are also dumpling lovers. We are so enamoured of these little beasties that we order 4 different lots (that’s an official count of 44 dumplings in total!) plus other dishes.
There’s a man in the left back corner of the restaurant that sits in a panelled section laboriously making the dumplings, if you watch him, he takes his time crafting each one and there is no rushing.
The specials are printed in English and Chinese (sometimes only Chinese) on bright scarlet cardboard on each wall and a look at the well-worn laminated 10 page menu (see full menu at end of story) in front of us shows us a dizzying array of tempting dishes. There are a number of choices for vegetarians too.
Shanghai dumplings are different from the Cantonese Yum Cha variety of dumplings. There is no smooth semi transcluent delicate skin on these. These are sturdier more robust dumplings made for the cold northern temperature. The stars of the show and the first to arrive are definitely the Mini Pork Buns or Xiǎolóngbāo ($5.80 for 8 dumplings). They’re not exactly bun like, forget visions of Char Sieu bows. They’re relatively thin skinned dumplings filled with soup and minced pork and when you bite into them, you get a squirt of hot gingery pork soup. Absolute heaven (or hell if you bite into one without waiting and scald your mouth). If you have a look at the picture you can see the sides and bottoms of the skins are slightly rose tinted and full of the deliciously gingery pork soup waiting to burst out.
A huge plate of 18 steamed pork and mushroom dumplings arrives ($6.60). This dish would have to define “value for money”. The skin is thick, floury and firm and the pork & mushroom filling is comfortingly good and flavoursome. The mushroom flavour is subtle but if you try the other 3 flavours (pork & coriander, pork & aniseed or pork & garlic chive) the flavour is distinct. Nothing fancy here, just very tasty fill-er-up food and yes you read correctly, you get 18 of these for $6.60!
The pan fried pork buns with shallots ($7.80 for 10 dumplings) arrive and they’re wonderfully crispy on the bottom and cushioney soft and chewy on the top. The filling is the same as the steamed pork and mushroom dumplings. The texture is very moresish and I find myself eating more of these than the others dipping the crispy bottoms into the oyster sauce from the chinese broccoli.
The last dumplings are the Shanghai Shao Mai sticky rice dumplings ($6 for 8 dumplings). I am a big sticky rice fan and I also love chinese pork sausage (Lup Cheong: chopped pork, pork fat, salt, honey or sugar, soy sauce and Chinese five-spice powder) and these dumplings are aromatic and flavoursome with the lup cheong, shiitake mushroom and smoky sesame oil with absolutely perfectly cooked sticky rice. Read More
