Tingha Palace - Parramatta

Address: Parramatta Leagues Club / 13-15 O'Connell St Parramatta NSW 2150
Phone: (02) 9890 1688

So today for lunch, we decided to go to visit the Chinese Restaurant at Parramatta Leagues Club for some 'Yum Cha' direct translation 'drink tea' in Cantonese. The location is very nice, ambience all very well done as expected inside a Leagues Club and the whole design of the restaurant was very authentic 'Chinese'. Upon entrance, we were greeted and taken to our table. As per all Yum Cha places, they ask you what tea you want to drink. We chose Jasmine Tea.

I was very disappointed with the tea they gave us, it was the bottom of the packet all crushed up and loose. So whenever we poured tea or tried to drink tea, we'd be drinking the tea leaves. Taste wasn't too bad but honestly, the bottom of the packet of the tea should be separated and disposed of.

Anyways, we ordered a total of 6 dishes

From top down, left to right we have Chicken Feet, Prawn Dumplings, BBQ Pork Pastry (Char Siu Sou), Pan-Fried Dumplings (Guo Tie), Rice Noodle Rolls and Steamed Glutinous Rice.

Chicken Feet was very unique, brought a little SiChuan into a Canton Black Bean Style Chicken Feet.

The Prawn Dumplings also not bad, not the best available in Australia but I haven't ordered this dish in a while due to many locations ability to fail the most common ordered dish in Yum Cha and they didn't do too bad here.

The BBQ Pork Pastry was very crunchy, but I felt the BBQ Pork inside the pastry didn't do its job, it was very dry and lacked moisture inside. And the pastry was just crunchy, it wasn't 'Sou' enough. Wasn't too bad of a dish though.

The Pan-Fried dumplings here were pretty yummy, they looked a bit dodgy at first, I was wondering why the grey skin, but ended up tasting pretty nice. The skin wasn't too thick, nor to thin, the pork mixture inside was very nice and had a nice soup taste in it. Very well done on this one.

Then the Rice Noodle Rolls, they were cooked fresh in front of your face, there is a trolley pushing them around and when you order it, the lady cooks it and fries it for you on her trolley in your vision. Was cooked very nicely and very fresh when placed on the table. Crunchy, smooth yet also thin and not too much oil. A very nice dish well done here.

Lastly was the Glutinous Rice, it was very disappointing. The flavour was awful and bitter (too much leaf flavour), the rice was too dry (not glutinous at all) and they didn't have many side dishes wrapped inside of the rice (not even Salty Duck Egg... which normally comes in all of them).

Overall, I would give this dining experience a rating of 6.5/10.

Food wasn't too bad, much better then many Yum Cha destinations out there, but it definitely wasn't the best.

-Samuel.

Shanghai Chef Kitchen - Parramatta

Today, I went to a restaurant nearby for dinner. Ambience, very casual, nothing special to see here but an obvious local favourite as this place is packed for lunch with daily lunch specials from $7.80.

Most Shanghai restaurants provide the 'Shanghai style' meals and at the same time also have the casual 'Canton style' dining (so the mongolian lamb, sweet n sour pork etc.)

At Shanghai Chef Kitchen, this does not differ and so on my visit I went for a 'Shanghai style' dinner. It was pretty quiet today, and so we quickly made our orders.

This was the first dish to arrive on our table, Hot n Sour soup. For $4.80, this is probably one of the best Hot n Sour soups you will get. There is a larger size for $8.80 but we settled at the small size.

Quickly after, came the 'Shanghai Fried Noodles'. As I said, it was a pretty quiet night for them so all the food practically came in 15 minutes, most the 15 minutes probably the time needed to steam the buns.

The noodles were great. Elasticity of the noodles was very good yet easy to bite through, little bit of pork meat with a relative amount of light and dark soy sauce gave it great taste and texture. The greens were a nice extra, one of my personal favourites.

This is the 'Seaweed Short Soup'. For those that know short soup, that normally uses a chicken broth, but this one has its own special soup base with Seaweed. Unlike the original short soups chicken-broth based soup, this ones lightly flavoured yet very diverse, one of the restaurants specialties.

Some Pork Ear... and many many dumplings!

The soup buns, 'xiao long bao' little dragon buns translated in english were very well made here. Good xiaolongbao's are defined by thin pastry, great tasting soup and pork mince. It is very easy to oversteam the buns, even one or two minutes extra can cause the pastry to pop or stick to the bottom, thus controlling the timing of steaming these buns is very important. The xiao long bao's here were perfectly steamed, and met all the requirements of good soup buns. I personally think they have some of the best xiao long bao's around Sydney.

Last was the pan-fried dumplings. These weren't bad, the meat inside was very nice and the soup squirted when I bit the pastry but I personally thought the pastry was too thick and the meat was too little.

All in all it was a pretty nice casual dinner and I would come back for some more.

My Rating: 7.5/10

-Samuel.

Superbowl - Cabramatta

Today, I ended up in Cabramatta searching for a place to dine and came across 'Superbowl'. For those that don't know Superbowl is a very popular supper (10pm-2am) dining place located in Chinatown. I was surprised that they had one in Cabramatta and as such decided to dine here this evening.

The whole design of the restaurant is MUCH MUCH better and cleaner than their Chinatown counterpart, and overall I think a very nice place for a casual dinner.

At entry, knowing this IS the under the same establishment as the Chinatown Superbowl, I wasn't really expecting much... however, on entry we were greeted and offered a nice table to sit at. The menus came and  we quickly made our orders. 

After ordering, we were offered complimentary soup and some snacks, the soup was very very nice and the flavouring of the 'dried vegetables' in the soup was very imminent..

Also bought coke, they looked awesome so I thought I'd take a photo. Don't see these often. (300mL tall cans)

Quickly following the soup, came the Salt and Pepper Prawns. Their Salt and Pepper cooking style was top-notch, crunchy-ness was well controlled, the spices well balanced and wasn't too salty, nor too spicy. Very nice!

 After that came the Peking Duck pancakes. Peking Duck in most restaurants provide a 2-course choice, first is the pancake and second, a selection between Shredded Duck Noodles or Duck Sang Chow Bow. as Traditional Peking Duck pancakes only use the skin and little meat of the duck, thus the remaining meat of the duck will be used on your second course. We picked the Sang Chow Bow.

The Peking Duck here was of very top quality, good Peking Duck is defined by golden crunchy skin, with a touch of meat and tiny bit of fat, most, if not all pieces of the duck for the pancakes met these requirements. As with all Peking duck pancakes, there is some green inside each, these are normally raw cucumber, shallots or radish. Here we had cucumber and shallots. Cucumber was fresh and the shallots were very juicy and easy to bite through.
They provided 12 pancakes for a full duck and 6 for half.

 This is the Sang Chow Bow it came with, 6 pieces for full and 3 pieces for half. Very well fried with a touch of lightly fried red onions creating a different and delicious taste.

 Following up we had Ginger Shallot Steamed Baby Abalone, it looked too good when they presented it as such this is all I had left after I quickly consumed it. The amount of ginger and shallot provided was very abundant and was steamed to a point where it was easy to bite through.Baby Abalones are fresh picked from the tank and you can see them pick them out of the tank. The Sweet Seafood Soy Sauce was very well mixed and overall a very nice dish.

I'm not sure when this arrived on the table, but this is the Curry Calamari. It follows closely with the original Hong Kong taste of Curry Fishballs but made with Calamari. Little bit hot for my liking but as I said, the 'original Hong Kong taste'. It should be immediately available as these are readily available for purchase at the front counter in a pan.

When we were done with all the food, we were offered complimentary dessert 'Bitter Melon Pudding'. Their Bitter Melon Pudding was very very nice. Didn't taste the bitterness in the bitter melon at all, soft and jelly and topped with coconut cream with sago at the bottom of the bowl, just perfect.

All in all, this was a VERY pleasant dining experience for me, especially for a casual dinner and I practically have nothing bad  to say about this place, service was great, food was great and pricing is very reasonable.

Casual Dinner

My Rating: 9.5/10

-Samuel.

Dan's House - City

Hello everyone!

Last night we went out to the city for dinner, and we decided to give Dan's House a try.

A friend of mine told me about this restaurant and highly recommended me to go try there.


When we got there, I was very surprised by the modern furniture the and the big dining space they had, also with an open kitchen for you to see the chef's cooking.

It took us a while looking at their menu because they had a huge variety to offer. They have a lot of specialty Beijing style Chinese food that you rarely can find at normal Chinese restaurants.


So here are the things we ordered.

Pineapple and cranberry mocktail $7.80
The drink was rather sweet, you can taste a lot of pineapple juice and not so much cranberry.

Duck Soup, which is complimentary when you order Peking Duck.
The soup was very heavily flavored can all you can taste was pepper and chicken salt and no signs of duck.

Dan's House Special Braised Pork Belly. $19.80
The texture of the pork belly was very nice and soft. The flavoring was quite good and you can taste a hint a nut in the sauce. The taste was very mild at first bite, but the after taste was a bit too salty for me.

Salt and Pepper Duck Bone. $10.80
Like the name of the dish, it's just fried duck bone with very few meat on it. You can taste the salt but not the pepper, not like the traditional way of making salt and pepper.

Lastly, our half order of Peking Duck. $39.80
This was what we looked forwarded to the most, but it ended up being a disappointment.

Their way of making Peking Duck is a lot different to the traditional way of making Peking Duck. Traditionally, the duck is meant to have a crispy skin on top and a thin layer of meat on the bottom. Instead their was mostly duck meat, and not very crispy skin.

They gave us a lot of slices of duck meat but only 8 pieces of wrappers, and we found it very difficult to put at least 3 pieces of duck into our Peking Duck wrappers.

The Peking Duck was pretty average, the taste was ok, but was not spectacular. But because the restaurant specializes in Peking Duck, it was rather a disappointment for me.

Overall I would rate this restaurant a score of 4.5 out of 10

The prices are quite expensive for the proportions they serve.

The food is very heavily flavored and salty.

The service was average.

The ambiance was pretty nice though.


I would not recommend this place for Peking Duck, but they do  have other Beijing cuisines on the menu that seemed to be worth a try.



Thanks for reading!

See you all soon in my next restaurant review.

-Kumi.