It’s been a while since I’ve been to Greenwood Chinese. My husband I used to frequent the restaurant when it was under previous management and they used to have a Yum Cha special on the weekends when dishes were $2.50 each. Yes really, dishes were that cheap. So cheap that my husband would order plates and plates of Har Gow and scoff them down while patting his distended stomach blissful in the savings that he’d made. Now that it has changed hands, the specials are gone along with my husband’s patronage.

Today, M and I are at Greenwood Plaza and having a quick lunch. We need something quick and Yum Cha, with it’s at-the-ready trolleys circulating seems the perfect choice. We pass the enormous fish tank at the front and make our way to a table. Within seconds, we have our first steamed goodies on the table.

Chee Cheong Fan with prawns

The slippery and ready to fall apart rice flour rolls are filled with prawns and coated in a semi sweet soy sauce. They’re not as good as I usually like them, tasting quite floury rather than delicate.

Spinach dumplings

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It’s a girly afternoon that brings my friend Gina, Teena and I to Sky Phoenix. We’ve left the boys behind and are going to Yum Cha, shopping and the latest Sex and The City movie. The boys don’t mind, they’re more than grateful that they don’t have to sit through the movie which for a straight man is as bewildering and foreign as washing the dishes or the world of shoe shopping. The only part that the boys would miss is the Yum Cha. We usually go to Sky Phoenix as a) it looks chic inside b) we never have to wait and c) the food is good and the trolley ladies always stop and explain to us what they have in English. Having waited once for a table for 2 hours at Yum Cha (Kam Fook), I’ve been permanently scarred by the experience and we’ve also had trolley ladies whiz past us not willing to stop (Marigold Citymark) where I also saw Adman Siimon Reynolds get just as frustrated at the trolleys flying past and not stopping for him either (I guess they really didn’t know who he was ).

Pork with honey and black pepper sauce $9.80

We want to sit near the window but they won’t let us, despite the fact that the two areas are empty and remain so even after we leave. Many trolleys stop by and we take advantage of this and crowd our table with dishes so that we can talk without being interrupted. The first dish we select happens to be a “kitchen special” ($9.80), a small square plate of pork pieces coated in a honey and black pepper sauce. The pork is crispy and fattily delicious and the sauce deliciously sweet with a hint of hotness. I don’t know if the small serving necessarily warrants the price tag but it’s delicious nevertheless.

Scallop dumplings

The scallop dumplings are next, plump with seafood with the delicate translucent skin, although it could be prawns as well as the prized scallops for all we can discern.

Spinach and Seafood dumplings

The spinach and seafood dumplings are next, one of my firm favourites. They’re delicious and flavoursome with crunchy pockets of water chestnuts and all at the table murmur our agreement at its goodness. And having so much spinach in them can only attest to how healthy they are, right?

Yam dumplings

One of my favourite yum cha dishes is next, the yam dumplings. Although I prefer the steamed dumplings, I can never go past these dumplings. Coated in a fine lacey golden deep fried outer that crumbles and collapses in the mouth to reveal a gooey yam mash centre with mung beans and pork. I love dipping this in sweet and sour sauce and reveling in it’s soft and crispy textures.

Prawn Har Gow

The Har Gow is a favourite of mine and my husband’s and we’ve been known to order 4 of these at a Yum Cha seating. These are 4 plump prawn filled dumplings. There are two kinds of Yum Cha restaurants, ones that will serve piddly little Har Gow with tiny minced up prawns or the ones that serve these big plump dumplings with whole or halved prawns. Thankfully most good ones will have these although when I do come across one of the smaller ones I’m not happy. It’s also handy as it’s the only Chinese Yum Cha item that I know how to say in Chinese without eliciting a puzzled expression.

Ham sui gok

The Ham Sui gok (ok this is a second item I can vaguely pronounce), a pale, deep fried football of goodness, has crispy, sticky outer courtesy of the rice flour that sticks to your teeth. It’s filled with a delicious minced pork and dried prawn interior. And despite my rather poor explanation, they are better than they sound.

Custard dumplings

We’re done with our savouries now and going onto the sweets. We’ve spotted a cute pumpkin shaped fried dumpling and we’re told it has not pumpkin, but custard inside. The pumpkin stem is actually the top of a bird’s eye chili. As Gina points out, it’s someone’s job to put the little details on these things and one of them being putting the chili stem onto these dumplings. The blistered pale deep fried surface is similar to the Ham Sui Gok and hides a delicious thick custard inside. It’s like a tastier, cuter custard puff.

Black sesame and mango dessert

Our last dish is the one chosen simply because it looked like sushi and we had never seen it before. It has a black sesame jelly outer and a mango pudding filling. Black sesame can either be gorgeous in desserts or jarring and in this case it is jarring with a smokey, savoury sesame oil flavour to it. We peel off the outer jelly and eat the delicious mango pudding jelly inside.

We’re full and ready for a spot of shopping and the movie to end all girly movies. And the total damage? $56.10. More money for Manolos which would make Carrie proud.

Sky Phoenix

Level 3, Skygarden
77 Castlereagh Street Sydney NSW 2000
Open 7 days
Also a location at Manly, Rhodes and Castle Hill
http://www.phoenixrestaurants.com.au/

If you start to see a pattern of me reviewing restaurants around the Kingsford way, you are indeed sensing a theme. My husband and I are houseminding for my parents who live in the Eastern Suburbs and we thought that while we were here, we might take advantage of the fascinating eatery studded strip of Anzac Parade.

Tea Inn is a Taiwanese Fast Food and Tea House that I haven’t been to for years. It’s just the order this one afternoon when we need to eat something sustaining but quickly. I don’t eat McDonalds so this is the next best thing. It’s full with students and young people no doubt from the nearby university.

Bubble Pearl tea is like the Coke of Asia, the chewy fat pearls of tapioca sucked up through the fat straws in a satisfying way. My husband loves these so we order the most interesting coffee combination: Pomegranate Coffee with pearls $3.80. We also ask what is good and authentically Taiwanese. The waitress suggest the Sa Cha Beef and rice ($8) and the deep fried chicken in salt and pepper with noodles ($8). For dessert we choose a shaved ice dessert topped with peanuts, sweet lotus seed and black plums for $5.80 (any of the sweet toppings can be ordered in a singular shaved ice for $4.80 each). The menu is huge and seafood dishes top the range at $14-$15 whilst other meats such as chicken or pork dishes are $12 and there are also Laksas ($9.5) and noodle dishes ($8) as well as 2 pages of drinks and desserts of the shaved ice variety.

There are even $5 dishes such as pork mince on rice for the truly frugal and a ridiculously cheap afternoon tea menu featuring dishes from $4.80-$7.50 which includes a drink.

Pomegranate Coffee with pearls $3.80

We’ve asked them to hurry as I need to make a beauty appointment and within minutes, our dishes are making their way to the table. The Pomegranate coffee is surprisingly delicious and lightly tinged pink. It’s not particularly strong in pomegranate flavour though but it is good-it reminds me of Japanese iced coffee or coffee jelly. Curiously, the cups of water we ask for are a little salty in taste!

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I’ll start off with an embarrassing incident. We were walking to the Hong Kong Cake Shop on busy Victoria Avenue Chatswood as I wanted to buy some bread and cakes (what’s new you might say). I saw a sign saying “Come in and try our fish balls”. Not being one to refuse a food invitation I walked in and helped myself to a toothpicked morsel from a plate of several on the counter. There was a loud gasp from the staff. Apparently I had helped myself to a paying customer’s plate that just happened to be sitting on the counter. I apologised profusely. I obviously had no idea and the owner apologised to me for scaring me. In my defence, your Honour, sample plates are usually on the counter with toothpicks and this customer’s order of 20 or so fish balls had a toothpick in every fish ball and of course they were small sample sized I naturally assumed….

I’m babbling of course. I recovered from my embarrassment and bought some goodies. Armed with a tray and tongs, the first thing to catch me eye was a Corrugated loaf ($2)-it was a good 15cms long and indeed corrugated in shape and flexible. It smells sweet and buttery and is interspersed with sultanas. My husband likes this bread sliced, with jam for breakfast.

The next thing I purchased was a lotus seed cake with preserved vegetable $1.80. I adore Lotus seed, it’s my version of chocolate flavour. If I see something lotus seed flavoured, I’ll order it above all other flavours. The pastry is fairly layered and the lotus seed paste thick. What I hadn’t counted on was the preserved vegetable. It had a strong aroma and a firm texture and if I could pinpoint an aroma it would be spicy ginger.

Another flavour that I particularly like is Chestnut (don’t leave me alone with a can of chestnut puree) and at $1.40 for the cake, it’s a steal. It’s a plain but soft vanilla sponge with a thin smearing of that Chinese mock cream that Chinese bakeries often have and then a squiggle of chestnut puree on top of mock cream at the top.

The last item was a red bean jelly ($1.10). They dislodged it from the bowl with a skewer for me to take away. She mentioned that there was rice in it so I thought that there would be sticky rice but it appears that it’s either rice flour in the jelly or something else entirely that I can’t see or taste or something was lost in the translation. In any case, it’s not the most flavoursome of jellies and I give to my husband, a jelly loving fanatic who gobbles it down.

The prices are typical of Chinese bakeries, amazingly good. Just don’t help yourself to the toothpicked balls on the counter!

Hong Kong Cake Shop

Shop B3 Victoria Plaza 369 Victoria Ave, Chatswood
Tel: +61 (02) 9419 2204

Sometimes, when you’re having the laziest of a lazy 4 day weekend, all you can manage to travel is Chinatown for a loadup of Chinese dumplings. Shanghai Night in Ashfield is my husband’s favourite place to eat, probably in the whole of Sydney but we just couldn’t muster up the energy to drive there so it was to Chinese Noodle Restaurant in Chinatown, half an hour closer, that we went. Its an unusual setup, all geared to get maximum table turnover in a tiny but crowded space. There are plenty of people outside waiting for a table and you order from the menu while waiting outside and when your table is ready, so is your meal, or at least most of the dishes you have ordered. None of this wasting 10 minutes precious table space umming and ahhing over what you want. Its strictly eat and go but unlike Shanghai Night, the service is pretty friendly.

We order the Juicy pork buns (like the Shanghai night mini pork buns) $8 for 10; a half serve of 5 pan fried pork buns $4; Pork and seafood steamed dumplings, 16 for $8; Fragrant Spiced noodles $8; Braised Eggplant and Potato $9.80 and Mushroom and chinese vegetables $8.80. Prices are a dollar or two higher than Shanghai Night which is understandable given that its in the city. Like Uighur and Northern Chinese restaurants, there are grapevines stretching out across the ceilings and wall tapestries.

I have to duck off to the ladies while my husband and the Assman wait for our table outside. I have to be escorted there-they don’t give you the keys, they take you there. When I return a few minutes later, they’re already seated and we already have two dishes on the table.

Braised eggplant and potato $9.80

The braised eggplant and potato is full and flavoursome-the eggplant is crispy on the outside and soft inside and coated in a delicious spicy garlic sauce. The potato is similar to roast potato chunks in a chinese sauce.

Mushrooms and chinese vegetables $8.80

The mushrooms with chinese vegetables by comparison is more low key. Not bad by any means but following such a full flavoured dish does not do the mildly flavoured dish any good.

Juicy pork buns, 10 for $8

Our Juicy pork buns come in two steamer baskets with 5 dumplings in each-which is one serving we are told. They’re juicy and very full of liquid but they’re not particularly gingery like Shanghai night’s ones which we prefer. Still its a generous serve of 10 for our $8

Pork and seafood steamed dumplings, 16 for $8

My husband loves the pork and seafood steamed dumplings, the less glamorous, dumpy cousin to the showy mini pork buns. The dumplings are a little bigger than Shanghai night’s and the filling has a distinctly different taste although I wouldn’t have necessarily proclaimed it to be seafood. It doesn’t matter what I think of these though, my husband is fiercely loyal to these and devours every one except for the one I try. Yes luvvies, that’s 15 dumplings as well as his share in other dishes.

Pan fried pork buns, 5 for $4

I try the mini fried pork buns, 5 large upturned golden bottomed wheat flour dumplings with thick chewy skins and pork inside. They’re decent but I admit here that I prefer Shanghai Night’s version better.

Fragrant spiced noodles $8

Lastly I try the fragrant spiced noodles. These are a huge disappointment flavour wise and are not really fragrant, unless you count the scent of oil, soy sauce and chili flakes abundantly scattered on top. The thick, endlessly long noodles are rather fun to play with though and hooking them with your chopsticks and trying to get them into your small bowl is quite a challenge. When Assman tries to hook his in from a great height, we see the staff watching him to see whether he will make it in and of course he doesn’t as they break halfway and they laugh good naturedly. There is no meat in this dish, just a lot of chinese greens so he makes a quick meal of it and all that is left is a soup with 1/2cms of oil floating at the top and a lot of chili flakes.

We watch the noodles being made from the square window into the frantically ordered kitchen and watch them rhythmically loop the handmade noodles into a bundle before plunging them into the boiling water. Dinner and a show indeed!

Chinese Noodle Restaurant

Shop TG7, 8 Quay Street Haymarket NSW 2000
(Entrance from Thomas Street, next to Burlington Centre)