It Just Has To Be Delicious

Posts tagged ‘Chinese’

Como Garden, Como

I think that Como Garden is fairly new. I saw some posts on Instagram and the food looked amazing so we paid the restaurant a visit after a Sunday morning park walk. It’s on Melville Parade just across from the freeway and overlooking the Swan River. There are tables both outside and inside, and we were seated fairly quickly. We chose some food from the trolleys but also ordered some items that I had been looking forward to. The restaurant makes it’s own dumplings and many of them are signature dishes.

First choices were Har Gow (prawn) and Scallop dumplings from the trolley.

For steamed dumplings these were probably the best we have ever tasted. You could really taste the scallop, it wasn’t mixed in with prawn, and the Har Gow were packed with prawn, absolutely delicious. I usually order my Har Gow with Sui Mai because they traditionally go together, but decided to save room for other tasty dishes.

Next came glutinous rice dumplings Ham Sui Gok (affectionately known as footballs). If you haven’t tried these, you really should – they are usually minced pork with veggies, and the signature Como Garden version have preserved vegetables in them. They were also really light and not stodgy like others can be. Very very good footballs.

Then came the signature brown rice flour rolls stuffed with prawn in cruller pastry. Such a lovely version of rice flour rolls (which can often be all roll and no filling), and with a nice soy dressing.

Finally one of our favourites – fired radish cake in XO sauce. So umami, beautiful soft radish cake with a crispy edge, and a burst of XO flavour. Probably the best radish cake I have tasted.

Como Garden oozed quality from start to finish, even the jasmine tea tasted better than other restaurants (and $1 per person – not like the $4 per person I have been charged at Emperor’s Kitchen). Every dish was delicious, with generous fillings, quality ingredients, what’s not to like? I’ll be back.

Last visit – June 2025

Click Here to find out more

Category:

Restaurant review

Tagged with:

Grand Orient, Perth CBD

Grand Orient is situated in the Melbourne Hotel on the corner of Milligan Street and Hay Street. Once you work out how to get in (we tried two doors before finding the actual entrance inside the hotel), you are transported to another world. The decor is traditional Chinese elegance, with muted lighting. Staff are very helpful, and on our visit there were plenty of tables celebrating special occasions, seemingly via the set menu with lobster and crab galore.

We chose the Peking duck with san choy bao. The duck is carved at the table, and the waiter makes up the pancakes withe crispy duck skin, cucumber, carrot, onion and hoisin sauce. It’s a real touch of theatre and we felt very spoilt.

San choy bao were beautifully presented, lettuce cups of seasoned duck with vegetables. Both duck courses were delicious. We soon noticed that pretty much every table ordered the duck – it’s obviously a speciality.

For the post-duck course we chose the deep fried prawns Hong Kong Bay style (with crispy chilli, spring onion, garlic). Excellent quality fresh prawns, with a perfect coating of batter and delicious crispy bits.

We also had Young Chow fried rice – very tasty with large prawns, barbecue pork, celery and egg.

We watched in awe as some of the larger tables were served delectable looking lobster with noodles, and a huge crab with Singapore style chilli sauce. The staff really go to a lot of effort to serve the food at the table, impeccably done with a flourish. All in all a very pleasant experience and much fancier than I expected. I will definitely be back to try some of the other dishes.

Click Here to find out more

Last visit – March 2025

Category:

Restaurant review

Tagged with:

Canton Roe, Northbridge

Our favourite local yum cha joint has closed down, so we had to find a new one. There are really not many places in the Northern suburbs, so we decided to look at Northbridge again and settled for Canton Roe on Roe Street.

There’s 3 hours free parking at the Cultural Centre car park, which is always a bonus in central Perth. Canton Roe is busy and sometimes appears chaotic, but is incredibly well organised. We didn’t have to wait long before being seated.

When you order tea, you get a bowl of chilli sauce too, always good for dipping dumplings.

They have all the favourites on the menu, and the quality of the food is very good.

We chose:

Xiao long bao
Seafood sui mai
Seaweed prawn rolls
“Footballs” minced pork dumplings
Har Gow prawn dumplings
Stir Fried radish cake in XO sauce

All of the dishes were really good, and excellent quality. The prawn in the seaweed rolls was plentiful, the football dumplings were crispy on the outside with a very tasty mince filling, sui mai were wonderfully delicious with a nice amount of roe on top. I think we’ve found our new favourite, Canton Roe is the real deal.

Last Visit – we’ll be coming here a lot so likely in the last few weeks!

Category:

Restaurant review

Tagged with:

Silks (Afternoon Tea), Crown, Burswood

Silks is a restaurant that I have been wanting to try for some time, and when I saw that they serve a unique Cantonese style afternoon tea on Saturdays, I couldn’t resist giving it a try.

There is a choice of cocktails and mocktails, and I chose a refreshing Lime and lemongrass cooler from the mocktail range.

The afternoon tea menu also includes Butterfly flower tea which changes colour from vivid blue to vivid purple with a touch of acid such as lemon.

The meal was served in a bamboo steaming basket which was quirky, colourful and very appealing. I couldn’t wait to tuck in, and the centrepiece – a bao bun with cumin lamb – was a triumph, a very well crafted bun, and I would happily have eaten two of them.

The wok fried king prawn with chilli sea salt was equally magnificent, and again a whole basket of these would have gone down a treat. How do they get those chilli strings so fine?

Next came a sesame ball with black sesame and beetroot, not really savoury but not really sweet either, but tasted nice. Quite typical of the non-sweet Asian desserts.

I then tried the green tea choux. Adorned with green tea chocolate and filled to the brim with sweetened green tea cream, it was surprisingly good and incredibly light.

The blueberry and lime sphere looked beautiful and tasted equally good with intense flavours of blueberry and the bright element of lime complementing it superbly.

The next basket was the raspberry, coconut and lemongrass roulade and wow it was incredible. The intense raspberry flavour was so good, I think this was my favourite sweet.

I finished up with the mandarin macaron, choc full of mandarin flavour and a really good macaron – macaron perfection.

This was certainly an unusual and surprising afternoon tea. It wasn’t particularly filling though, and I would have liked a ‘go large’ option, maybe three extra dishes with a few more savouries. I can’t fault any of the dishes, flavours were intense, the appearance of the meal was appealing, and the dining room is beautifully decorated with open tables and private booths. I would happily dine here again, maybe for dinner next time.

Last visit date – March 2022

Click here to find out more

Category:

Fun thing to do, Restaurant review

Tagged with:

Kung Po

This is a nice recipe for mid-week dinner. You can pretty much make it up as you go along – it’s probably not the definitive authentic kung po recipe, but it works for me and is very tasty.

Kung Po Chicken:
kp 1

Kung Po Tofu:
kp 2

Serve it with rice. You can vary the veggies that you add to it depending on what you have in the cupboard, but traditional favourites are carrot, onion, baby sweetcorn, capsicum and tomatoes. You can also add peanuts and extra chilli if you like it hotter.
It contains dried chillies, which are quite hot, if you don’t want it to be quite so spicy, leave the dried chilli seeds out.
You can also use fresh chilli instead of dried – use whatever you prefer or have available – even a teaspoon of chilli paste would work.
This recipe is for chicken, but you can use tofu, prawns, or pork instead.

Recipe – serves 2 :
300g chicken sliced into thin bite sized strips (or other meat or firm pieces of tofu)
1 tablespoon cornflour
1/2 teaspoon crushed szechuan peppercorns
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon dark soy
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
1 or 2 chopped dried red chillies with or without seeds
Mixed veg, sliced thinly for stir frying e.g.:
Carrot, baby sweetcorn, red onion, capsicum, tomatoes, mushroom, broccoli, beansprouts, snow peas.
Peanuts (optional)

1. Mix the cornflour with the crushed peppercorns, and coat the chicken with the flour mixture.
2. Mix together the sauce ingredients in a jug – hoisin, dark soy, rice wine vinegar and dried chilli.
3. Prepare your veggies of choice by washing and slicing them thinly – allow a handful of veggies per person.
4. Heat a wok with 2-3 tablespoons of vegetable or groundnut oil in it.
5. When hot, add the chicken and stir fry for approx 4 minutes.
6. Now add the veggies and peanuts and stir fry for a further 3-4 minutes.
7. Add the sauce (rinse the jug with a little water to get every last drop). Heat the sauce through and stir it to coat all of the veggies and chicken. When the chicken is cooked, it is ready – cut through a piece of chicken to be sure.
8. If you like it salty, you can add some salt at this stage, but I find that the dark soy adds plenty of salt flavour.
Serve with rice and enjoy.

Category:

Recipe, Vegan/Vegetarian

Tagged with:

Heng’s, Edgewater

We visited Heng’s on a recommendation from a work colleague. It’s a no frills Chinese restaurant in Edgewater, nestled in amongst the shops on Edgewater Drive.

heng 1

It was quite empty when we arrived, but soon filled up with local diners, and the phone rang non-stop for takeaway orders. We were given some very tasty prawn crackers to start.

heng 2

Our starters were prawn toasts and chicken satay. Both very flavoursome, and the prawn crackers arrived with the traditional red gloopy sweet and sour sauce.

heng 3

The satays were nicely marinated with a good curry peanut sauce.

heng 4

For mains we chose prawns with ginger and spring onion:

heng 5

Chicken with black bean and capsicum:

heng 6

Special fried rice:

heng 7

The rice had that lovely charred wok flavour, portions were generous, and the other dishes were pleasant to eat – standard Chinese restaurant fare.
I wouldn’t say the food was amazing, but if you want good, cheap Chinese food, this a reasonable local option.

Last Visit Date – April 2019

Click here to find out more

Category:

Restaurant review

Tagged with:

Hong Kong Cuisine, Myaree

 Hong Kong Cuisine Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

I was really looking forward to this outing. Our friends Susie and Simon had been telling us for a while about this fabulous Chinese restaurant close to their home. It had been dubbed ‘Chinese in the Cave’ and I was curious to experience this food in an unusual setting. The first thing that you notice as you walk in is that the decor is indeed very cave-like, but also the clientele is almost exclusively Chinese, and there are various notes on the window (probably special set menus) that are not in English. This was a good sign because if Chinese people are happy to eat here, it points towards it being very authentic.

hkc 1

The menu is quite extensive and contains photos for some of the dishes, so that you know what to expect. We were certainly spoiled for choice because many of the dishes had our tastebuds tingling in anticipation.
We chose prawn toasts to start, quite good, but also quite a thin layer of prawns, and I would have liked them a bit fatter. Served with a sweet dip and very good on the crunch factor.

hkc 2

We also chose the fungus with chilli. This was a dish of cloud ear mushrooms served in chilli oil, and the waitress double checked with us because she knew that it would be spicy. It was spicy, but very very tasty, the only difficulty being that as you got nearer the bottom of the dish it was impossible to take a spoonful without scooping up a large amount of the super hot chilli oil. If you have ever tasted chilli oil, you will know that you only need a little !

hkc 3

Next to arrive was the young chow fried rice, a very tasty and slightly smoky ‘special’ rice containing shrimps, pork, onions, egg and many other little flavour bursts.

hkc 4

Next came the salt and spicy ribs. These were the star of the meal with an amazing depth of flavour and a definite umami kick. I could have eaten the whole plate of these and nothing else, and I would have been very happy (but we had to share).

hkc 5

We also ordered beef with ginger, another fabulous dish, full of flavour, with really good ‘melt in the mouth’ tender beef.

hkc 6

Next to arrive was the fish – a whole halibut with ginger and spring onion. I couldn’t fault this – very fresh and with delicate flavours that complemented the fish perfectly. Another star of the show.

hkc 7

I chose a claypot chicken dish with soy and oyster sauce. This was a dish that was full of flavour but at the risk of sounding like a spoiled brat, I found it hard to eat. All of the chicken was on the bone and every mouthful was 50% bone and cartilage. Cooking meat on the bone definitely adds to the flavour, but there comes a point where the pleasure of eating it is slightly spoiled by the effort involved, so although I enjoyed the taste, I would probably not order this dish again.

hkc 8

Rice can be ordered by the bowl, plate, or bucket. We ordered a bucket of boiled rice and found that the insulated bucket was very effective at keeping the rice warm.

hkc 9

At the end of the meal, the waitress brought fresh melon (which we didn’t need to order), jasmine tea was also included.

hkc 10

Well Hong Kong Cuisine was wonderful and I can’t wait to go back and have ‘Chinese in the Cave’ again ! I absolutely loved the fried rice, the ribs, the fish and the beef, and would probably order them again with a few different additional dishes. It was good value too, working out at less then $30 a head for such a huge amount of food. Yum.

Last Visit Date – December 2018

Click here to find out more

Category:

Restaurant review

Tagged with: