Dumpling Kitchen — Restaurant in Melbourne

This is a neighbourhood dumpling joint with one cook and one server, so keep your expectations realistic.

Personally, the dumpling skin is a bit thick for my liking but the filling is still hand made and reasonably seasoned. Pan fried pot sticker rendition is not as good as the boiled version due to the thicker skin. However, the pan fried does have OK crunch.

The beef fried noodles are solid in terms of ingredients and flavour but lacking the skill for that smokey wok taste; borne out by the contrast between the overly soft greens and the still crunchy under cooked carrots. The low cooking temp means the noodles comes out feeling a bit too oily.

The wontons in the chilli oil wontons are decent, but let down by the lack of chilli kick.

The hero dish is the fried chicken wingettes (fermented bean curd flavour imparting a slight sweetness). Thin crunchy batter with juicy middle. The dish is served piping hot from the fryer, so be warned.

I have been going to this place for years. More for convenience than anything else. Also the Aussie kid at home thinks the dumplings at this place rocks ... 🤨

Convenience...

Why are people giving so many stars? This was a horrible dining experience. Where do I even start? If you dine in, they give you plastic cups so old they look dirty. We ordered 3 things and they brought them out at different times. The first main came out so fast it was scary. Must be already made. ,It was Singapore noodles with no flavour at all. Not hot either. Just warm. Then we had a soup dish brought out with no flavour at all and again just warm. Then they brought the dumplings out last. They had a bizarre looking frypan sear on them as if they were just thrown in a frypan to heat them up. They were so bad I can honestly say a $5 bag of dim sims from Woolworth taste so much nicer. Incredibly, even the soy sauce on the table had no real taste/kick or thickness to it. Just amazing how the food had no taste and not served hot. I will never return here. Person who takes your money doesn't ask how it was. They must know it...

We thoroughly enjoyed our experience here. The restaurant is small and quite thrillingly plain and unmodern. The experience is the food and service not some fancy fitout. The food is wonderful. And it’s really good value too. The serves are expansive and the flavours are very good. We had some terrific spring rolls, a very tidy steak and black bean sauce - one of our party had been dreaming of the dish - and fried rice with real flavour. The greens were mighty good as well. It’s very very good honest food here. Service was quick and friendly throughout. Prices are reasonable and well in check. I actually really wish this was my local Chinese. It’s clean, well run and thoroughly good value. It’s a gem basically and you need to...