Chinese

Luyu & Yum Yum – Babetown vs the King of Newtown

September 26, 2015 by Andrew Christie Leave a Comment

Okay its been a while. So long in fact that the few notes I took on the night are mostly meaningless now. I mean, New York shoes, what could that refer to? Anyone? Now that I’m showing visible signs of ageing, I must take more meaningful notes – the old memory is not what it used to be. Either that or write things up sooner.

Anyway, what I do remember about this particular outing was that it was a lot of fun. Strop organised it as an excuse for us to go back to Luyu & Yum Yum for their dumplings which are both yummy and spectacularly presented. However, from my point of view the main draw for returning was actually their whisky sours variants. These are called King of Newtown on the cocktail list, come with a culturally appropriate sprinkling of tea leaves on top, and are delicious.

Strop decided that as Luyu & Yum Yum could accommodate their various dietary pecadillos, she would invite the Stropolina and her housemates, collectively known as Babetown along on this outing. As it turned out, the Eleanor part of Babetown was unable to attend due to breaking her wrist playing netball. So while she was stuck at home with only a handful of serious painkillers for company, the rest of the team kept Strop and me company in Newtown.

The Babetown-lite faction was made up of Katherine, Jess and the Stropolina. They were joined by Maddy, one of their mates, who helped maintain the symmetry of our table. Strop and I had carefully positioned our aging and wrinkled forms facing each other in the middle of the table, so that we would haved gorgeous young things on either side, ready to give us a polite and caring poke if we happened to exhibit any embarrassing symptoms of ageing. Such as falling asleep or dribbling.

Luyu &Yum Yum is a relative newcomer to King St. It moved in to the upstairs space that used to be occupied by Paju BBQ, and transformed what was a bit of a barn of a space into something much darker and sexier. At one end there is a glassed in kitchen full of sizzling woks and bamboo steamers, at the other end is a screened off space with tables for large parties. In between there is a bar and lots of tables which mostly seem to be occupied.

There are plenty of staff out on the floor and in the kitchen. All very friendly and efficient. First order of business was drinks, and I successfully managed to convince everyone to try a King of Newtown to start with. Everyone said they enjoyed them, but I did notice that a couple of Babetowners switched to other cocktails for the next round. Oh well, more sour whisky for me I suppose.

Luyu & Yum Yum is a high concept dumpling joint. The little steamy or crispy parcels are like the Faberge of dumplings. Artful and yummy, and likely to dump a burst of hot tasty soup in your mouth when you bite into them. Some are shaped like hedgehogs or white rabbits (complete with red eyes), some just look like dumplings. All are yummy.

Despite my wish to go off the reservation and try things that weren’t actually dumplings, Strop and Babetown were adamant that they were happy just to have lots of dumplings. And cocktails.

The room was quite noisy, so even the young people were cupping their hands around their ears in order to hear what was being said on the other side of the table. It was Friday night and I have a theory that people are louder on Friday nights after they have been let out of work for the weekend. The pent up pressure of a week’s worth of quiet desperation leads to a quick and noisy release. And there was music too, which appealed to Babetown and resulted in a little bit of seat dancing when they thought no one was looking. They decided the music selection sounded like the So Fresh 2001 compilation (back when they were ~13 year olds!).

I just remembered what the New York shoes note referred to. The Stropolina was telling a long and involved story about trying to buy some special designer shoes for her cousin’s eighteenth birthday when she was in New York recently – the point of which still escapes me. Oh well I suppose it’s some progress. What about Who’s Hannah? Anyone have any ideas what that might mean?

It’s great to see places like Luyu & Yum Yum opening up in King Street. Smart, fun and yummy, Asian with style and attitude. More of that please. Next time I go I want to try some of their teas, and the non-dumpling offerings.

Luyu & Yum Yum – Level 1, 196 King St, Newtown

587 – Good Wok – Crawling our way to Old-School Oz-Chinese

June 27, 2015 by Andrew Christie 9 Comments

A Saturday night outing!

Woo hoo.

Friday night was unavailable as my 96 year old father had selfishly booked it for his birthday, so the quest got bumped to Saturday. Which in our little world is grounds for a bit of excitement. To celebrate this innovation and to entertain ourselves on the long walk to almost-St-Peters, we undertook a bit of a pub crawl through the Courty, the old Sando, and the Union. We had to by-pass the Towny as it was being picketed by a mob of transgender protesters and their enthusiastic supporters. “See how much more fun Saturday night is,” I said to Strop, but she wasn’t listening to me, she was busy chatting up one of the cops that were keeping an eye on proceedings.

Even with lots of stops and drinks on the way, it’s a long way and it’s all getting a bit familiar. Strop took particular offence to the sameness of the tile shop’s window display. “They should change the tiles, I’m bored with these ones.” Fair enough, surely considerate shop owners would take our needs into account and change their window displays every week.

By the time we got to Good Wok we were in a very cheerful mood. And quite hungry too, but easily confused by the barrage of menus confronting us: stuck to the counter, up on the wall and in takeaway flyers. Strop decided that a fixed menu was the way to go. There was some complication because the version that caught her eye came with lots of entrees but only one main. It took the efforts of two staff members to convey this subtlety, but eventually we got the message. “That’s alright, we’ll just order another main.” Easy.

Good Wok is not large but we had a choice of tables, as there was only one other patron present when we arrived, although more came during the evening. There was a steady stream of take away customers coming and going all the time we were there, and most seemed to be regulars who joked with the staff, and knew exactly what they wanted.

After we took our seats, we were promptly presented with a large plate of prawn crackers. I was trying to remember the last time we’d had prawn crackers as they rapidly and crunchily, disappeared. I think I might have said, “These are the best prawn crackers ever,” or the closest approximation that a mouthful of prawn crackers will allow.

Soup was next. Corn and chicken soup and it was yum, verging on double yum. Hot, glutinous and filling. The dim sims and spring rolls arrived with little bowls of brightly coloured dipping sauce. Strop muttered something about “If you were tripping, this would be the place to come.” I have no idea what she meant.

The pork ribs in Peking sauce were sweet and spicy with plenty of pineapple chunks. Another double yum contender. The chicken and mushroom hotpot was good too. Tasty, with lots of ginger and plenty of fresh flavoured veges.

Good Wok serves up good, old-fashioned Oz-Chinese, cheap and cheerful, with more flavours than you can poke a stick at. A real find. After we had eaten everything up, we decanted ourselves down the road a bit to the Botany View, just to round out the pub crawl and to fortify ourselves for the long road home.

266 – Happy Chef – Double Happy on Valentines Day

February 15, 2014 by Andrew Christie 3 Comments

We’ve had a weekend off, staying with friends at the Old Mill in beautiful Braidwood, and eating some nice nosh at Torpeas. Funnily enough our absence has coincided with the best ever daily stats on the blog (not that we concern ourselves with such -ooh look it’s just gone up again). So a big thank you to all the bots responsible for taking us from a daily average of about 5 to an all time high score of 200+.

So, Happy Chef. A Newtown institution if ever there was one, and Valentine’s Day as well.

Now that we are approaching the very heart of Newtown I have decided to dump the bus and switch to the train. Cityrail turns out to be faster than a 428, so even after a stop for a refreshing Reschs at the Bank Hotel and a chapter of Dennis Lehane, I am still early. Which is just as well because even at 6:15, Happy Chef is nearly full. I quickly pull three tables together to ensure enough space for Strop, Ashleigh, Paul and the Nedsky, tonight’s partners-in-dine (last seen at Blossoming Lotus). Then it is a matter of ordering a Tsing Tao and some deep-fried prawns, to help me occupy my territory, as packs of the un-seated circle through the restaurant, giving my large and sparsely populated table, hungry stares. (I reckon I could work up some allusion to either zombies or Australia’s place in Asia in there somewhere, if only I could be bothered.)

Happy Chef is a no-frills, old fashioned suburban Chinese eatery. You order and pay at the counter from the extensive pictorial menu displayed overhead, take your number back to your table and soon after, a white clad waiter brings you plates of food. They do a big business in takeaways too. A lot of the customers seem to be locals and regulars, chatting away to the staff about kids and the new school year. The decor is all fluoro lights and hard surfaces which makes for a lot of background noise, especially as the early crowd includes plenty of children.

Luckily I am saved from having to call on Scott Morrison to come and protect my distant borders from zombie refugees, by the arrival of Paul and Strop. They are soon followed by Ash and the Nedsky, who soon spots a couple of school chums at another table and in no time at all the three of them have merged into an informal gang of Happy Chef doormen, spruiking the delights of retro-chinese food to passers-by on King Street. The street is packed tonight, the normal friday night crowds swollen by hopeful couples, and by desperate single men and women striding purposefully along the footpath, clutching a variety of last minute floral arrangements.

Somewhere in amongst all the arrivals and greetings, my prawn entree/place-holder arrived. Four fat, battered prawns with a dish of sweet and sour sauce. It’s a long time since I had sweet and sour anything, and I am not ashamed to say that I really enjoyed this trip down memory lane. The sauce was pineappley and sticky, the batter was crispy and the cholesterol-laden prawns were plump. Yum, paint me double-happy. Strop took some convincing but, Paul and I eventually convinced her that she needed to embrace the retro-chinese vibe. It was about then that Ash informed us that one of her friends refers to Happy Chef as Happy Death. On this note we all began craning our necks to check what else the menu offered. We eventually decided on salt and pepper squid, XO beans, sweet and sour fish, emperor chicken, fried rice and veggie char kway teow. While Strop and Paul went to do the ordering Ashleigh and I discovered that Nedsky had been quietly cornering the market in toothpicks, and was putting them to use, doing vampire impersonations for the passing pedestrians.

The crowd at Happy Chef is older than at most of the King Street eateries we have been to, mostly families and locals. Paul is perplexed by the lack of hipsters until he makes a sighting near the loos, just a brief glimpse of a beard and a checked shirt, but enough to confirm the presence of these shy creatures even in this un-trendy environment.

The food was better than I had been expecting, tasty, crunchy and yummy. The only disappointment was the bean dish, which I thought was a bit over-seasoned. The sweet and sour fish was really good. Paul was convinced that the pineapple chunks were fresh not canned, which I thought was a bit at odds with the whole 70s retro-Chinese vibe, and Ash pointed out that the sauce didn’t have quite the right intensity of lurid pinkness that she remembered. Still there was none left over. The emperor chicken was good too, nice and crispy with another tasty sauce.

By this time we were on to our second round of Tsing Taos and Strop was getting a bit more generous with her illustrative hand gestures. She described her days adventures in Parramatta by knocking over any beer bottles within range. After her third attempt to clear the table she did confess that “Oh yes, and I did have a cocktail before I arrived.” Must have been a good one!

On the way home Strop and I made our way through the King Street crowds and were entertained by a skinny girl Irish dancing on the front porch of what used to be the Old Fish Cafe. She clattered away on a piece of board, arms clamped to her sides, legs going in all directions, while an over-weight dachshund showed its appreciation by barking enthusiastically. This is what Newtown is for.

236 – Pho 236 – That’ll do for this year

December 29, 2013 by Andrew Christie Leave a Comment

There is a no nonsense attitude about this place. It is there in the name, with the street address included. There is nothing fancy in the fit-out either, and no decorations. Just a long narrow rectangular tube with glass at the street end and a counter at the back. Tiled floors and plain painted walls, containing a row of tables on either side of a central aisle that leads straight from the door to the business end. There is nothing fancy about the food either: Vietnamese/Chinese that is not great but good enough for the price. Service is fast, and you can drink Coke or Sunkist or Water, or you can bring your own. We brought our own. A nice little Pinot Grigio courtesy of the Coopers Arms across the street, which seemed a bit far to go as there is a Vintage Cellars next door, but unfortunately it is closed due to it being Boxing Day and there being trading rules.

It is early but Pho 236 is fairly busy — as it always seems to be. It has been around for as long as we have been paying attention and nothing seems to change. It is popular with the traditional Newtown set of students and people after a quick feed before a movie or going on to a pub or whatever it is that young people do after 9pm when all decent gentle folk are in bed or watching Midsomer Murders.

We are earlier than usual tonight as we have the granddaughter, Pancetta in tow, and we are leaving bright and early the next morning to go on a Summer Holiday (sing along now with Uncle Cliff: We’re all going on a…., No more worries for a week or two, etc.). Stropette and the Heathen are along for the ride and we’ve extended the family to include, Cousin Alison and Brother Steve. After dragging a couple of tables together, counting heads and matching them to chairs, we are delivered of a pile of particularly raggedy-looking laminated pictogram menus.

Due to the rule of nominative determinism Strop and I resolve to have the Special Beef pho. Strop likes to go for the “Special” because it traditionally comes with sausage and bits of tendon (or gristle as she refers to them). Steve orders the chicken pho, Alison goes for sizzling king prawns, Stropette orders spring rolls and vermicelli for herself, and tofu and vegies for the Pancetta. The Heathen has something with prawns and tofu, chow mein I think — I wasn’t paying very close attention. To start we have fresh spring rolls, because they’re usually delicious, and a bit of a tradition with us.

The Pancetta, being blonde and gorgeous, proceeds to seduce the staff behind the counter by smiling and talking nonsense at them, only occasionally interrupted by the ear-drum piercing squeal of a metal chair leg being dragged across a ceramic floor tile, and being amplified by every hard surface in the restaurant. Yes, it is a bit noisy. But the food comes quickly, preceded by a handful of cutlery and chopsticks, placed in a delicate pile in the middle of the table.

Fresh spring rolls: nothing special, nothing terrible. About the same quality as you can buy in any food hall in the city.

The Special Beef pho is not bad, although Strop is disappointed by the total lack of gristle, but there is plenty of sausage to compensate. I really enjoyed the stock when I got the balance of basil, chilli, and lime garnishes just right. Strop was disappointed but then she is comparing it to Pho Pasteur which has very good stock. I think the verdict on the rest of the dishes was along the lines of “Okay, but I’ve had better.”

I hadn’t planned on being the entertainment for the evening, but that was the way it turned out when I got a chilli seed caught at the back of my throat. My usual reaction to a chilli overdose is a light-hearted bout of hiccups, which is particularly entertaining for Strop. This was different. This was coughing. And choking. Perhaps not life threatening, but certainly snot-and-tear-inducing. The worst part was that it seemed to have scarred the back of my throat so that even when I had regained my composure, and assured Strop that I didn’t need “a good thump between the shoulder blades,” every subsequent mouthful of soup brought on more coughing. How they laughed — once they had decided I wasn’t going to actually die.

The menu board doesn't look as if it has changed this century — The menu board doesn’t look as if it has changed this century

The damage, apart from my pride, was $75 for seven people. Not bad.

So now we have reached the intersection of Church Street, from now on we will be turning right at King Street and making the run down towards the railway station, where we will have to decide whether to stick with the mediocre task at hand, or allow ourselves to be seduced by the bright lights and higher culinary standards of Enmore Road. Only time will tell. See you next year.

194 – Dumpling King Chinese Restaurant – Can we get some mojo with that?

September 28, 2013 by Andrew Christie 4 Comments

It has finally happened. We’ve lost our mojo. It’s gone. Buggered off. Wandered off into the dusk, last seen slithering through the grating of a King Street storm water inlet, no doubt well on its way through the ancient root clogged pipes to Rozelle Bay along with an assortment of plastic bottles, used condoms and inner-west staffy turds. Come back you chicken-hearted bastard, we’re only a quarter of the way to St Peters, you can’t quit now.

I knew we were in trouble when Strop didn’t set to immediately checking in with Facebook (I know I hate Facebook too, but I think Strop owns shares). This is a ritual that I have complained about many times on our past outings but now I miss it, now I realise that it was the pulse of our mojo. Without that little throbber we’re just a rudderless agglomeration of appetites adrift on a sea of cheap eats. No purpose, no direction.

The second bad sign was Strop questioning me taking notes on my phone. “What are you doing?” she asked. I look at her, not sure what she means. I look down at the notes I am tapping laboriously into Evernote (rather than writing in a Moleskine notebook because it is more socially acceptable to be a bore with an iDevice than it is with paper and pen). What can she mean? This is what I do. Desperately take notes, in the hope that some of the Friday night King Street mundanery can be turned into Saturday morning blog-wittery (fuck-witterings?). She be’s all entertaining, I be note taking. Surely she understands this break down of labour by now. Surely she doesn’t want me to talk as well.

Ok, I am blathering here. In a panic, trying to rescue last night’s mojo-less debacle. Better get back to the story, stick to the facts.

6pm on Friday night. 194 King Street. Dumpling King Chinese Restaurant. It was an early start, still light out, but cooling rapidly. The evening buses were growling and farting on their way out of the city, as I turned up the collar of my jacket against the wind and stubbed out my Winfield Blue. She was late…

Sorry – no idea where that was going (Do they still sell Winfield Blues? I gave up smoking in 1979, maybe they’re called Gangrenous Greens now). Back to dinner. We are starting early because tonight’s eating adventure is just a precursor to a night of scintillating wit courtesy of Mr Wil Anderson’s show at the Enmore. It starts at 7:30 so we need to get a wriggle on. To my surprise, we are joined tonight by the Stropolina who is not coming to the show and has been suffering from a bout of gastro all week. She is sloshing with artificial electrolytes to stave off dehydration, so I’m not sure that going toe-to-toe with a King Street Chinese is the wisest move, but I think I lost my right to give that kind of advice when she turned 25.

As has probably become clear by now, Strop and I are quite literal in our interpretations, and the Stropolina is the fruit of our loins, so there was a fair bit of consternation when it becomes apparent that Dumpling King serves dishes other than dumplings. Consternation turns to outrage when the menu claims that the signature dish of Dumpling King is Sang Choi Bao. I’m sorry, what?

We are nothing if not bloody minded – so we ignore the lettuce leaves, and all the other offerings and stick with dumplings. Pork and chive dumplings steamed, and prawn dumplings fried. And some simple steamed veges for the poor Stropolina’s battered belly. The food is good. Not brilliant, but good (this is King Street after all not Enmore Road), but the service is… uninvolved might be the best term. There are plenty of them, but they do seem to spend a lot of time milling around the counter, pointing at the order dockets. Several tables around us were getting huffy due to a lack of menus, or drinks, or wine glasses. Dumpling King does seem to regard itself as a bit of a phenomenon (you can buy a tee shirt emblazoned with “I ♡ Dumpling King” for a mere $15) and by the time we left for the theatre it was packed with punters. Maybe they know something we don’t. We weren’t terribly impressed, but I think our mojo-free status may have meant that we didn’t really give them a a fair shake.

We were impressed by Wil Anderson though. Very funny. I was also impressed by the young woman sitting next to me who sounded as if she was going to laugh up a lung when Anderson turned his attention to the inevitable causative correlation between gay marriage and sex with animals.

Some Indian joint is next.

153 New Taste – It Ain’t Poetry But Blimey It’s Cheap

July 5, 2013 by Andrew Christie 12 Comments

It is freezing and pissing down for our first post-Feej foray back into the Friday night food frenzy of King Street. We have arranged to meet first at the Marly – tonight we are joined by Rebecca and Duncan who are friends of Strop, but I have apparently met them once. As everyone apart from me is running a bit late due to Sydney’s public transport not being water proof, I get to sit at the bar and down a Dogbolter or two while reading more of the latest Phillip Kerr Nazi crime-thriller. When everyone makes it to the rendezvous, dripping from the deluge, we all have another Dogbolter (I have converted them) while Rebecca politely asks about our holiday in Feej. We tell her we are renewed and re-invigorated, getting a little bit breathless as we describe the sunsets, the snorkelling (Clown fish! Just off the beach, can you imagine!) the granddaughter time, the cocktails, and the lack of shoes. And what have you been up to Rebecca and Duncan, we innocently asked, walking straight into their trap. Oh, we’ve been off on a bit of holiday ourselves, South America, in search of the Lesser Fat-Tailed Armadillo. I don’t think that’s quite right but it was something like that – the shorthand is not what it used to be – and I was still coming to terms with the fact that there was more than one type of Armadillo. Then there was the quicksand adventure in which Rebecca is left to sink slowly into the sunset while the guide leads the rest of the party to firmer ground. And the Jaguars stalking the river boats, chasing off the crew. Did you know that the Jaguar has the most powerful bite of any of the big cats? No, I didn’t either, direct descendants of Sabre-tooth tigers, apparently. And of course Piranha, it is South America after all. No no, they’re only a problem in the dry season, when the river dries up, and they get trapped in a shrinking puddle – then they’ll strip you to the bone as quick as look at you. Our Feej resort vacation is looking a bit feeble in the face of Rebecca and Duncan’s episode of Bomba the Jungle Boy. Time for something to eat I think.

Luckily the restaurant is just next door. It used to be called Won Ton Noodle Inn, but somehow while we were not paying attention in Feej it became something called New Taste. This is just sad really, Won Ton Noodle Inn is poetry, New Taste is just a bad lifestyle magazine. Nothing else seems to have changed though, as far as we can tell from the outside. It’s not the sort of place you would normally go into unless you needed a really cheap feed and you weren’t too worried about the sanctity of your stomach. Street appeal is in negative figures here. New Taste has rejected the new-fangled trend for wide-open welcoming restaurant frontages that the rest of King Street has succumbed to. It looks like a hole in the wall, just a doorway and a lot of very faded pictures of the food on offer. Going inside is like going to a different country, a country called the past: they do things differently there. The kitchen is up the front, but there is a dining room out the back with a few small tables. Further out the back is a strange outdoor room with lime-green walls and white plastic tables that are bigger and which might suit us better The Staff suggests, pointing out that our group of 4 is going to stretch the carrying capacity of the tables in the main dining area. However, we decide to squeeze up rather than risk crossing the yard and getting soaked by the downpour and possibly never being seen again. I’m not trying to cast any nasturtiums here, but there was something about that back shed and those fluro-lit lime green walls and the lonely looking garden furniture that screamed NO! Don’t you do it, you’ll never be seen again, or at the very least your food will be swamped with inches of rainwater before it gets to your table. So we stayed inside.

Another strange thing about New Taste – it’s a 2 man band, or at least it was on Friday night at 7:45. This may have something to do with the size of the joint but probably has more to do with the operating margins. In case I forget to mention it, this place is very cheap.

First things first: wine. New Taste is extremely conveniently located next door to a bottle shop. I had hardly noticed Rebecca had gone before she was back with an entirely drinkable bottle of Pinot Grigio. We thought about asking for wine glasses but it really looked as if this might be a challenge for The Staff so we just drank it out of our little ceramic tea cups instead. We drank it fairly quickly too.

"I didn't start to worry until the quicksand got up to here" — “I didn’t start to worry until the quicksand got up to here”

The Staff turned up to take our order with a biro and the back of a well-used envelope. Ordering the food took a little longer than getting the wine in. We ordered dumplings to start and a dish each but Rebecca is something of a part-time vego on account of being a full time animal-life-preserving person, so she wanted a vegetable dish to go with the meats and seafoods that occupied the menu, and that the rest of us had unquestioningly chosen. Rebecca had other ideas though, and wasn’t afraid to run them up The Staff’s flagpole. Unfortunately The Staff had other ideas too. Rebecca fancied eggplant. Ok, nodding and smiling from The Staff, he can do eggplant, how about Salt and Pepper Eggplant. Now, I would have given up the hunt at this point but not Rebecca. Well can you stir fry it, she said, maybe with some other vegetables? Broccoli? Sure, sure, fry it with little bit of batter, some salt, some pepper, you’ll like it. At this point Rebecca saw the way things were going, okaaa-ay then. What we got was Salt and Pepper Eggplant, and he was right, we did like it. We made the mistake of assuming we were still in Australia by ordering boiled rice for four. The Staff looked at us funny because he knew that in this country each dish comes with it’s own rice.

I have no memory of what the other dishes were, I know from the photos that peas featured in one of them, but they were all totally edible. The dumplings were very nice too, I do remember that. And it’s cheap, did I say that already? I mean really cheap, the dumplings and four dishes added up to a bill of $29. I would go again just for the pleasure of seeing the bill, but there is nothing wrong with the food, it’s just a bit unusual and on King Street that has to be a good thing.

Next up is a family outing to Tre Viet featuring the Outlaw. Can’t wait.