Eastern Dumpling House — Restaurant in Melbourne

A combo of Dumplings House and IKEA showroom .....

IKEA must sponsored this restaurant from the Ingo/Ivar combo dining table and chairs, some 18 tables and 72 chairs, Korken water jugs and the rest ..... :-)

First worrying sign, there aren't too many Asian looking fellas on this Australia Day inside, mostly Caucasians .... then I felt more at "home" when I see photos of food and drinks on the wall underneath a long great beautiful depiction of old China print .... and $1 sign at the cash register for credit card payment, that's more like it.

On a serious note ..... my summary of the day;

GOOD food Tofu Salad, apart from the tough Century Eggs it was fantastic for $7.00 - must re-order, hoping those Century eggs are "jelly-like" not hard rubbery next time. Pan-fried Pork dumplings, thin skin, fantastically made at $9.50/15 pcs. Steamed Chicken & Prawns dumplings, thicker skin, also fantastic at $9.00/12 pcs. Salt & Pepper Chicken Spare Ribs, that was easily one contender for the best in Melbourne, just wiped the oils on the bottom of the basket :-) $15.80.

In between .... Custard Buns $6.00/4 pcs.

BAD food Spring Onion Pancake, taste good, but was burnt, looks very different from the photo on the wall and definitely less pieces in the basket $6.00 I felt cheated :-( Chicken and Salted Fish Fried Rice, crinkly, not too oily, well balanced apart from wayyyyyyyyy TOO MUCH saltiness/salt $9.80.

Service is okay, yes slight communication problems, but not a big deal, we've got what we've ordered.

Value for money, except for the Salt & Pepper Chicken Spare ribs, although that they are good in comparison to the rest of the meals.

If not for those bad elements, easily 4.5/5 ...... will re-visit after making round visits to the other...

Customers beware !!! I ordered a main dish and special fried rice for lunch today from eastern dumpling house Carnegie, upon arriving to collect my food I only had my savings card available to make payment. I was notified at the till that they had a $30 minimum on cards and that there would be an additional $1 surcharge for paying with a savings card. My order came to a total of $25, I understand that a business is well within its rights to pass on the banks charges but ONLY what the bank actually charges them! Most bank charges do not exceed 1.5% of the actual purchase price for credit cards per transaction (I was paying with a debit savings card) if you work out the percentage on $25 that’s 4%, it’s absolutely criminal !! Their answer to my query of why they are charging so much was”if I don’t like it go and get cash out” To add the to the insult of this $1 charge on top of my meal price, the attitude of the staff and so called owner that was called to manage the situation leaves a lot to be desired, including snatching the food back and shoving it to the other side of the counter stating that they’d rather lose a sale than drop their extortionate surcharge fee ..... 👏👏👏 well done to the owner and staff of eastern dumpling house, you have now lost a customer and I will make sure your policy’s of scamming people out of money are very well known to all! To those who wish to eat here...

Ordered pork in claypot delivered through Fantuan & received boiled pork with a few vermicelli noodles & veggies accompanied by a bowl of clear broth. The whole thing literally tasted like water with a pinch of salt. The food was so bland & disgusting. Pork in a claypot is supposed to be a stewed pork cooked in a flavoursome dark soy caramelised sauce & dark in colour, not clear white. When I realised the dish was the wrong one I checked my order & their website. The dish I'd ordered had been removed from the menu, so it's obviously unavailable. Instead of contacting me to say the dish was unavailable, they thought they could fool me by sending me boiled pork instead. It is not OK to replace a dish without checking with the customer first, and worse what they sent me was not from their menu, who who on earth eats plain boiled pork in a clear tasteless broth? I'm sorry but you need to do better. If you can't provide something in an order, trying to recreate it by giving me an incomplete dish of boiled pork & broth is not OK. Isn't your restaurant supposed to be full of flavour (it's called spice spot on Fantuan), so I expected at least an attempt to add some sort of seasoning. I will be returning the dish to you tomorrow for an explanation of what you think it is. I hope you can learn something from this review & not treat customers like...