After struggling to find a car park near the China Tea House
in Erindale, we walked into the restaurant to find it busy and quite noisy – a
good sign on a Wednesday night!
According to Jim’s trusty phone app, the noise levels varied from 90-107
Decibels (depending on whether Ron was speaking!). To put that into
perspective, 90 decibels is the same noise levels as factory machinery and 107
decibels is the same level as a subway train.
The noise meant that it wouldn’t have been the best restaurant for a romantic
dinner but for a small group of 3 looking for good food at a reasonable price,
we were in for a real treat.
The best part about the China Tea House is its menu. Amongst the usual array of Chinese dishes are
more innovative dishes with unexpected combinations of flavours with a changing
blackboard menu that takes advantage of seasonal produce. Both Ron and Karen’s
eyes lit up at the thought of a dish (from the blackboard menu) which had both
Prawns and Lychees. The dish lived up to
our expectations – the sweet fresh lychees exploded in your mouth and
complemented the prawns in both texture and flavour.
The black board menu provided the other dish we really
enjoyed - a crispy fish with a honey soy sauce.
The fish was freshly fried with a light, crisp outer layer and
accompanied by a delicate, not too sweet sauce.
This matched the sweetness and delicateness of the fish
beautifully. The fish also included a
lovely combination of quality fresh vegetables (carrot, shredded iceberg
lettuce, sugar snap peas). Not only did this added texture to the dish, it
mopped up the sauce and cut through its sweetness. It was a surprisingly smart and
well-constructed dish.
The other two other dishes we ordered were not as good. The duck pancakes were OK rather than great
(the biggest problem was that they fell apart when we tried to eat them). The stir- fried chicken fillets with almonds
in a bird’s nest were disappointing.
There was a problem with the order and it came out much later than the
other dishes. Perhaps the kitchen rushed
the dish too much to get it out to us.
They used fried wonton wrappers for the bird’s nest rather than potato
straws – the effect was dry and tasteless and it detracted from the rest of the
dish. The chicken fillets themselves were
also slightly dry and the sauce was uninteresting. While there was nothing
inherently awful about the dish, it was one we wouldn’t recommend to others.
Despite this, overall we thought our meal was so good that
we brought back the larger group for our first meal after the Christmas
break. This time there were 5 of us and
we opted for 6 mains rather than having an entrée. Not surprisingly, we ordered
the prawn and lychee dish again. This was as good as last time and still Ron’s
favourite dish of the night. The other
dish we enjoyed last time (the crispy fish dish) seemed to have been changed
from our last visit but there was a similar dish which we thought we would try
in its place (a Thai style crispy fish with honey and soy sauce). The Thai dish was very tasty but we did
prefer its previous incarnation which had more vegetables and less lime in the
sauce. Megan also thought the crust could have been crispier.
The other dishes we ordered were all fantastic - Japanese
tofu with mushrooms, Yu Yuang Egg plant, Dry-fried spicy lamb and soft shell
crab with spicy salt. It was difficult
to pick a favourite from among them and we didn’t all agree on one. John and Jim particularly liked the stronger
flavours in the dry spicy lamb (reminiscent of a Shantung lamb). Megan and
Karen loved the Japanese Tofu. The tofu was beautifully silken in texture with
a light, crispy outer layer and was perfectly balanced with an array of
different mushrooms (the enoki was particularly nice). We all also really enjoyed the Yu Yuang
Eggplant. The chilli sauce was
wonderfully rich and its flavour was carried beautifully by the delicately
textured eggplant. Finally, the soft shell crab was really good (John rated it
as his #2 dish). It was a simple dish but done very well - the batter was
lovely and light and was not all fatty like many others we’ve had in the
past. Megan even commented that it was the best soft shell crab she'd tasted for
a while.
So, it ended up being a great start to our year even if
Andrew and Kim couldn’t make it. It was
a fantastic meal at a reasonable price ($25 a head) and we certainly had plenty
to eat (even without the extra dish!).
Even so we still managed to talk ourselves into going to Goodberry’s to
end the night with a dessert sundaes...ah, those guilty pleasures!
