Lunar Dumpling Bar — Restaurant in Melbourne

Really disappointed. We chose this restaurant after seeing all the great reviews, but left feeling unsatisfied, gaslit and hungry.

Upon arrival, we entered the empty restaurant behind another couple we didn’t know and were immediately sat next to them despite the entire place being empty and there being no reservations. It’s not like there wasn’t appropriately sized tables either, because there were plenty of 2 seat tables throughout. The other couple even loudly exclaimed ‘can’t we be seated apart, this place is empty!?’ and were clearly annoyed about it. My partner and I were uncomfortable and requested to be moved, to which we were given a blank stare and I had to point at another table and ask to sit there.

When our Xiao Long Bao arrived, 3 of the 5 had burst and looked sad and deflated. Considering 5 xiao long bao is $15, that’s $3 per bao and to have over half of the soup dumplings have no soup, that’s a bit disappointing. When we asked a staff member about it, he simply told us that was normal like we were idiots and then went back to what he was doing. I’ve had more than my fair share of XLB throughout the years and even made them myself so I know what’s normal - furthermore, I know it happens but if a customer raises it with you, you should at least try to acknowledge their concern and try to remedy it.

The twice cooked pork belly was ridiculously priced at $32 for 10 thinly sliced pieces of pork and mostly capsicum. The general flavour was good, but lacking seasoning and the heat expected from a Szechuan stir fry. The rice serving size was also tiny for $5.

The only saving grace was the potstickers, which were 5 for $15. We got the shiitake mushroom and pork ones, which were tasty and filled well albeit a bit doughy.

Overall, a really disappointing experience and we won’t be back again. Maybe if one of these areas was good it’d make up for the others but when the service, food AND value for money is lacking, there’s no...

There is not much to choose from in this style in this area which makes it good for the area, but the lack of competition makes it a bit of a hollow victory. OK I get it that theres an effort to be a bit different, but some of the choices on the menu make rookie mistakes in culinary terms. There's a certain amount of fresh ideas that could make it amazing but some of them are just attracting attention for no good reason. Why ruin classic dumplings with barramundi? or lamb and carrot? how about waygu beef and zucchini? Let's concentrate on getting it right on the classics first, theres a reason why some of these combinations aren't around and it's probably because they aren't always good. So here we are introducing a dumpling bar into an area where these is little competition and all this nonsense is on the menu. 9 bucks for 6 dumplings puts it about 40% more expensive than what would be considered normal for that sort of fare, then again, there is waygu there, but why ruin waygu by making it a side show? I'll give it a 3 star and put them on notice to have a...

Booked in at this cute little dumpling bar as the reviews looked great and had a lot of the things on the menu I wanted to try.

Loved how the jasmine tea was served and was more than enough for two and had a nice strong jasmine taste.

Vegetable spring rolls were delicious - can't really go wrong here.

For dumplings we tried the Pork Potstickers and Xiao Long Bao. The Potstickers had an okay flavour, but compared to other places they didn't quite stack up. Xiao Long Bao was really good though.

The Chicken Katsu Gua Bao were great - a bit of fresh chilli would have made them even better.

For dessert we had the Nutella Wontons and custard bao. Wontons were awesome, crispy and went well with the coconut icecream. The custard in the bao was a bit gluggy but overall it was...