Ginseng Southern Cross 15 February 2017

The up-market Chinese-Malaysian restaurant (Ginseng) is located in the (very) Greek (Hellenic) club in Woden.  Despite this odd juxtaposition, the restaurant has one of the best yum chas in Canberra. These have become so popular that you need to book well in advance.  The restaurant on a week night is much quieter and we were keen to try its à la carte menu to see if it was as good as its yum cha. 

We started really well with our first entrée (duck pancakes – what else!).  The peking style duck was beautifully tender with crispy skin and wrapped in thin pancakes with just enough hoisin sauce to cut through the rich duck meat.  These were absolutely divine - Ron declaring (with no one disagreeing) that they were the best he’d tasted in a long time. 

Unfortunately our second entrée (5 spiced white bait) was nowhere near as good.  The whitebait was battered, deep fried and flavoured with chilli, garlic, salt and 5-spice.  The coating was a bit oily and there wasn’t near enough flavours (particular salt) to compensate. In fact, the strongest flavour was garlic which seemed to be a little bitter.  

For our mains, we ordered seafood stuffed eggplant, wasabi beef loin steak, Nark Duck, baby spinach with shitake mushrooms and King Prawns with Thai basil, chilli and lime.  Our favourite dish was the seafood stuffed eggplant. The prawn based stuffing was sandwiched between 2 wedges of eggplant and the whole parcel deep fried.  Without any batter, the skin of the eggplant was almost crispy, a lovely contrast to the silky soft eggplant flesh beneath. The seafood stuffing was very tasty and added both texture and flavour to the dish.  The light sauce brought the seafood and eggplant elements together and complemented the dish very well. 

The other main dish that most of us enjoyed was the wasabi beef loin steak. It is a dish that tends to divide us.  I don’t think any of us (apart from Kim) like wasabi on its own. However in this dish most of the heat is absorbed by the meat and rather surprisingly the residual complex wasabi flavour matches the beef really well.  It is a particularly stunning combination if the meat is very tender and the wasabi flavour isn’t too strong.

Our third dish (Nark Duck) wasn’t as good as either the beef or seafood.  According to the menu, “Nark Duck” is a Southern China country style double cooked duck. It is firstly steamed with Asian spices, then pan fried and topped with crushed soya bean gravy and then served with poached Asian vegetables.  The duck was well-cooked but the bland gravy was a poor choice. It didn’t complement the meat, masked the flavours of the Asian spices and made the green vegetables go a little soggy.  

The fourth dish (baby spinach with shitake mushrooms) was quite nice but there was too much spinach and it needed more shitake mushrooms for balance and flavour.

Our final (and least favourite) dish of the night was the King Prawns. Served as a Thai-style hot pot dish, there was none of the balance or subtlety of Thai cuisine and far too much lime completely overpowered the dish.   

There was heaps of food but Ron and Jim were still keen to try dessert which was the usual Asian fare. Ron ordered the fried banana and Jim and Megan ordered deep fried ice cream.  Both desserts were fresh and well cooked. The pick of the two desserts was the fried banana – perhaps because bananas are currently in season.  The banana flesh was really soft and contrasted nicely with the light and crispy batter coating.  The caramel sauce also added a lovely toffee element. 

Overall, serving sizes were good and we really enjoyed some of the dishes (the duck entrée, the eggplant and the beef). However at around $40 per head, the restaurant was expensive and you’d expect the quality of the dishes to be more consistent for that price.  Also as Andrew noted, most of the dishes had a shiny glazed sauce. This not only made the dishes look similar but they also had similar mouth feel. It therefore became difficult to appreciate the individual nature of each dish.  It was much like the range of dim sums at a yum cha.  I know they’re all meant to be different but somehow they always all seem to taste the same…..