The Dumpling Inn menu can be quite challenging for Westerners. Some of the dishes have daunting ingredients like tripe, pig intestines and jellyfish (which only Ron the Brave was willing to try!). Other dishes are just unusual and without a clear description, you’re never quite sure what you’re ordering.
The most surprising dish of the night was “dry scallops with baby spinach”. We were all expecting a few (whole) scallops on a bed of spinach without any sauce (“dry”). Silly us! What arrived was a mound of wilted spinach completely encased in a rich umami sauce made from reconstituted dried scallops cut into smaller thread-like pieces. The sauce had a wonderful mouth feel and a strong seafood flavour so it was a much more interesting dish than we were expecting.
The other dishes were also very enjoyable. For 5 of us, we had 1 entrée and 5 main dishes. The entrée was the Dumpling Inn Crispy Duck - a deep fried ½ duck served Peking style with pancakes, cucumber and hoisin sauce. Always reliable, this dish didn’t disappoint us this time either!
Our 5 mains were the “dry” scallops, 4 season beans with minced pork and olive sauce, fried squid with hot rock salt, deep fried fish fillet in sweet ginger sauce and fillet steak with wasabi sauce.
Our favourite dishes were the 4 season beans and the fried fish. We often order dry fried beans with mince but this was the best version of the dish we have ever tasted. The addition of finely sliced Chinese olives (which are a completely different species to the Mediterranean olive) added an extra level of salt and flavour which really complemented the dish. The name “4 season” was a bit confusing but apparently, it’s the traditional (Sichuan) name of the dish and just refers to the heartiness of the beans which can be grown over 4 seasons (who knew?!).
The fried fish was fantastic. Coated with a light crispy batter, the delicate fish was soft and perfectly cooked. Minimal sauce meant that the fish wasn’t overpowered by the sauce and the batter stayed crispy throughout the meal. The sauce itself was also excellent – just enough ginger overtones to balance the sweetness of the sauce.
We also enjoyed the other mains. The fillet steak with wasabi sauce is a fantastic combination. The fillet steak is very tender and the wasabi kick cuts through the meatiness of the dish and lifts it to a higher level. The rock salt squid was a staple standard for us but well-cooked and not too hot or salty.
Despite being very full (OK...maybe we ordered one too many dishes!), we still apparently had room for dessert and shared a mixture of red bean cake and custard cake. Both dishes were very good but similar – deep fried pastry encasing 2 different fillings. The custard filling worked particularly well as its coconut flavour and softer texture was a nice contrast to the pastry.
Although the restaurant was noisier and more crowded that we would like (especially in these COVID times), the food and service were excellent and it was a great night with some fabulous food.
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