Shanghai City Restaurant

• Location: High Street, Preston
• Cuisine: Asian
• Style: Hawker style dining
• Price band: Low

Shanghai City Restaurant is on the very busy High Street packed in with a plethora of other asian restaurants. From the advertisements on the door, it seems that their main selling point is their hot pot buffet which can be had for $16pp.

When we entered the restaurant this was even more so evident, as all the tables were already decked out with portable tabletop gas burners and the entire left hand side of the room was dedicated to hotpot ingredients laid out in silver buffet trays. To drive the point home, before we had even been seated waitress assumed we were there for the hotpot.

First impressions of the interior of the restaurant are not that appealing. The interior and furnishings look somewhat cheap and a little shabby - very 'food court' style. The dining tables were all joined up into 3 large rows and were all a stained laminate and the chairs a nondescript practical standard. Shanghai City Restaurant employs a 'get your own cutlery' approach, so all chopsticks, forks and spoons are dumped into little buckets alongside a box of tissues on each row of tables. There's even a wall mounted TV showing some chinese tv channels and anime. If style and ambience is what you're after when you go out to a meal, then you'd best look elsewhere as this isn't the place for you.

We opted not to go for the hotpot but for the general menu dishes. There is a brief menu on a lit up display which shows several highlights of the menu, but this is only a small selection of what they have to offer. The 'superior pickle sauce' had me in tears though - they really need someone to watch their translation!

I must comment that it took a while to order as there was only the one waitress who seemed occupied with serving all the other customers first. When we finally managed to garner her attention, I ordered the Hot and Sour noodles with soup while my partner in eating went for the Spicy Shanghai Chicken Noodles. We also had a plate of Fried Pork Dumplings to share.

The dumplings arrived first and looked decently well browned on the bottom. They tasted decent - the bottom of the skins were nice and crispy while the tops were soft and easy to bite through. The inside pork filling had the right mix of pork to spring onion, but didn't have too powerful a flavour.

Next up, my Hot and Sour noodles with Soup arrived - I was a little surprised as the many times I have ordered this dish previously the soup has been a rather dark brown. The soup this time was clear - most probably from the lack of vinegar as there was not much more than a subtle hint of that 'sour' taste. Apart from that the dish was sufficiently spicy, and the bean curds and mushrooms were a delight to eat. It was just a shame there wasn't enough of them to really compliment the noodles.

The Spicy Shanghai Chicken Noodles were presented quite beautifully, but disappointingly weren't spicy at all. Nevertheless the flavour was quite pleasant, but as before with the Hot and Sour Noodles, I felt the ratio of chicken and vegetables to noodles should have been a bit higher.

All in all it's a decent cheap eat. Service wasn't the best and neither was the decor. For this kind of money there are plenty of other restaurants on High Street however that could offer more. As per the advertisements on the window, I suggest only going here for the $16 buffet hotpot.

Dumpling Plus

• Location - 269 Swanston Street, Melbourne 3000
• Cuisine - Asian
• Style - Casual Dining
• Price Band - Low

Located in the heart of Melbourne's CBD is a relatively new establishment called Dumplings Plus. Unsurprisingly given the name it specialises in dumplings as well as many other dishes separated roughly into 'hand made noodles', 'rice' and 'aroma dishes'.

The interior is very charming - it's laid out to look very traditionally Chinese with a strong wood panelled theme. The chairs look impressive and luxurious and a row of brightly lit red lanterns lines the kitchen which is visible from the dining area. But let's get to the food!

My partner-in-eating and I decided to test the flagship dumpling dishes that the restaurant name boasts. We started off with the pan-fried Shanghai pork bun:

They looked great and presented somewhat stylistically. They tasted great too - the dumpling skins had a delicious thick doughy feel to them and the pork meat was hot and flavoursome while also staying tender and juicy.

Next up we tried the Shanghai mini pork buns:

A tremendously difficult dish to get right, the Shanghai mini pork buns are meant to contain a good spoonful of broth sealed tightly inside each dumpling, and then steamed to perfection. The mini pork buns arrived in their bamboo steamer, but slick enough they could be removed from the thin layer of baking paper without puncturing the delicate skin and spilling the juices. One bite revealed that indeed a good amount of broth was to be found in each dumpling, however the pork centre was a let down. The filling felt somewhat muted/lacking in flavour - all that I was left with was an overpowering ginger taste which masked the pork flavour I was so looking forward to.

Lastly we had the Pan-fried pork dumplings:

I was less than impressed with the presentation of this lot - while fried to a lovely golden-brown, the dumplings were unattractively fused together into the one ugly super dumpling rendering its appearance more like a disgusting genetic aberration than an appetising dumpling dish. In short, it looked absolutely nothing like the neat and classy presentation the menu's library of pictures had suggested. The taste was decent but nothing to brag about. I did note that the dumplings had a lot more spring onion than one would expect though.

Accompanying our dinner we also had a tall glass of iced milk tea - a little too bitter for my taste, but somewhat the standard for milk tea I believe.

Overall it's a great place to eat - it's located conveniently on Swanston street of the city, the prices are cheap and the food is decent. Definitely worth a visit if you have a penchant for dumplings.