Ratings out of 5 stars
Ambiance 4
Taste 4 1/2
Value 5
Service 3
Overally 4 1/2
When Megan suggests travelling north side to a restaurant, it must be
good and so we were all looking forward to trying the Dumpling Inn in
Macquarie. Despite its location (a
complex behind the Salvos store in Jamison) and having no website or online
menu, the restaurant was quite crowded on Wednesday night. Clearly other people already knew about this
hidden gem.
As its name suggests, the restaurant has a reasonable selection of
dumpling dishes. It also has some very
unusual dishes on its “Chinese special menu” including pig’s intestine with
spicy Szechuan style sauce, deep fried golden crispy skin pigeon and jelly pork
with pickled cabbage in hot pot. We weren’t
game to try any of these dishes and since we also couldn’t work out from the
menu what some of the other dishes were, we played safe and selected a
conservative range of dishes.
We regretted this once fantastic food started arriving on other tables
and Ron went around the other tables to check what they had ordered. However,
we needn’t have worried as a short time later our own fantastic meal
arrived. We started with a sour and hot
won ton soup. This was a standard
Thai-style soup broth (stock, lime, chilli, fresh coriander and fish sauce) but
it had a good number of won tons which soaked up the (chilli) heat. As a result, the soup was light, tasty and
refreshing without being too hot - a nice way to start the meal.
We then ordered a couple of different types of dumplings (Peking meat
buns and sesame rolls with tasty chopped meats). It was a bit of a gamble because we had no
idea what either of these would be like.
In the end, the meat buns were just standard steamed dumplings (OK but a
little bland) but the sesame rolls were fantastic. A puff pastry shell casing and a meat filling
were served separately and then assembled at the table by the diner. As Megan
described the dish, it is similar to a Sang Choi Bao but having a puff pastry
case rather than a lettuce leaf. The puff pastry was light and flaky and
combined beautifully with the tasty stir fried filling.
After the soup and dumplings, we ordered 3 main courses (for 5 people)
– Dumpling Inn crispy duck, 4 season bean with minced pork and the deep fried
fish fillets with sweet ginger sauce. Initially we were worried that this might
have been a bit of a fried food overload but actually the combination went
surprisingly well.
The crispy duck was served “Peking style” with pancakes, cucumber and
hoisin sauce. This gave 6 discrete pancakes which was enough for each of us to
have a good taste without pigging out. The bean dish was also light and pretty
tasty – beans with a small bit of pork which added flavour without bulk. The final dish was the fish fillets. These
were coated in a beautifully crisp batter and had just enough honey-like (and
not too sweet) ginger sauce to coat the outside without overpowering it (as Jim
would say…yum, yum, yum).
We had ordered rice but this didn’t arrive – just as well as there was
plenty of food without it. In fact,
somehow we ordered way too much food (yet again!) and we struggled through it
all. Of course, we still had to have
dessert because “red bean cake” was on the menu (excuse #32). These are pancakes stuffed with red bean
paste and then deep fried. One of Ron’s favourite Asian-style desserts, he
describes them as “Chinese pop tarts”. We only ordered one to share among the 5
of us (actually that was all the restaurant had available) but it was enough
for a small taste without over indulging. We all enjoyed the dish and it was a
perfect way to end the meal.
Overall the meal was fantastic and very good value ($25.06 per
person). We’ll definitely be back again
and who knows, we may even be a little more adventurous next time (oh OK….maybe
not the pig intestines…).
