Chinese in Chatswood: Shanghai Dumpling, Master Bowl Chinese Restaurant and Tim Ho Wan

Chatswood has grown into its own mini-CBD over the years and what makes this place so exciting are the endless choices of restaurants, both new and old. It has certainly become a food hub for Sydney North! 

 I'd like to think I frequent Chatswood, but everytime I visit, there seems to be a new eatery. So my first stop: Shanghai Dumpling. This is a new branch of its parent store in Ashfield - which is an all too familiar story in Chatswood. Say what? Sounds just like New Shanghai and Shanghai Stories 1938 (Taste of Shanghai).

 This joint would have been better named Shanghai Wontons. As it only sells wontons - specifically 上海大云吞. You can choose from the basic flavours: pork and Shepherd's purse, chive and pork, chinese cabbage, mushroom and chicken or beancurd and mushroom. In addition, everyday they have 4 special flavours. On the day we went there was chicken and corn, prawn, bamboo and porkchicken and unfortunately I forgot to note down the other two.

You may choose to have single or a mix of fillings and select one of 4 ways for it to be served: in soup, dry, pan fried or with chilli dressing 红油炒手。The restaurant is small, but newly renovated, giving it a nice clean atmosphere.

 We're seated and waited for our food. The boss is always around and dad makes light conversation with him to find that this place uses 'real chicken broth' as the soup base. Apparently the stock is filtered to remove fats and grease, leaving only a clean, healthy soup base.

 And here we see the staff busily preparing the wontons. I choose half chives and pork and half prawn, porkchicken and bamboo (daily special) in the chilli dressing. Dad chooses the same fillings but in the healthy soup base.

Chive and pork/Prawn, porkchicken and bamboo wontons with chilli sauce $12.80

 They looked so awesome as they arrived. Piping hot and extremely fresh; you can instantly tell them apart from frozen wontons from the freezer section. Now comes the taste test. The first thing I notice is how wonderfully silky the wrapping is and its a good thickness to give it that bite from fresh noodle. This is the way Shanghai big wontons are supposed to be. Unfortunately my pleasant experience ends about there. Once I hit the filling, I regretted my choice of sauce as it was far too salty.

Chive and pork/ Prawn, porkchicken and bamboo wontons in soup $10.80

 Dad starts with this awesomely healthy chicken soup he was promised and was extremely disappointed by the blandness. It is a very hard sell for chicken soup - or anything more than boiling water with minimal seasoning. On the upside, it completely balanced the saltiness of the filling - so well that we drank every last drop of the 'soup'!

 Saltiness aside, we really enjoyed the pork and chive filling. It was reminiscent of pork and chive dumplings and those are my favourites, so who am I to complain? The prawn, porkchicken and bamboo missed the mark as it was even saltier than the pork and chive, and I didn't find much bamboo.

 This place also has a cool condiments table: complete with a chopstick sanitising machine! We didn't use any condiments though, as the wontons had enough flavour as they were.

Right next door to Shanghai dumplings is Master Bowl Chinese Restaurant. There isn't much to show for it but the concept is simple. You sit down, pick how spicy and how numbing you'd like your stir fry then you pick what ingredients you'd like to go into it.

We chose beef, pork belly, cauliflower, potato and oyster mushrooms. It's brought out in a big pot for you as pictured.

Pretty good midweek meal if you ask me! 

Tim Ho Wan

The world is mad about the cheapest Michelin starred restaurant you can visit. If you google Tim Ho Wan you will find a flood of results about its food, its international locations and most of all its Michelin star status. 

So recently Sydney opened its first (of 3 promised) Tim Ho Wan(s) in Chatswood. Tales of expected wait times are ridiculous! Anything between 1-2 hours on your average weekend. We had given up on the idea of trying it until we found it was open for dinner. Yum Cha for dinner? That's not really right... but I love yum cha so why not!

We went during the second week after opening on a Wednesday night. I arrived at 5:30 pm to find only a 10-15 min queue. Score! We got seated in now time and watched the queue build.

Braised chicken feet with abalone sauce $6.20

First to arrive were the chicken feet. And half the Australian population cringes *eww chicken feet*. How rude. Braised chicken feet are one of the most coveted yum cha dishes! Uncle G really likes this edition. They're soft, fall off the bone but surprisingly not deep fried. I prefer the traditional fried version but I guess umm... could that BE worse for your cholesterol?

Prawn dumplings $7.80

This is our yum cha staple. I am a hard one to impress with Har Gow and they did not impress me. Both of us thought they were average. Nothing bad, har gow is always a safe yum cha choice but it wasn't anything spectacular.

Beancurd skin roll with shrimp $6.80

These were also just ok. They were nice but a little dry. I wish it came with the sweet plum dipping sauce they give you at regular yum chas.

Rice with Chicken, sausage, mushroom $8.80

I never order this at yum cha, but I wanted to try it on this day. And once again, it was nice. Nothing worth a 1 hour wait for though.

Baked bun with BBQ pork $6.80

The highlight of the day. While my reviews of all the other dishes have been mediocre, these babies save the day. I would wait 1 hour for these buns and comfortably devour all 3. Next time I go, I'm ordering a set to myself.

I've had these in Taiwan but how can you get enough of the sweet crunchy coating and the soft fluffy bun filled with tender morsels of pork drenched in cha sui sauce. Here's a business idea: have a take away window that just sell these! These are so phenomenal I'd happily eat it for breakfast, lunch and tea! (And dinner as I just did).

Mango pomelo sago $6.00

O yes and we had the mango, pomelo sago. This was really nice too. Uncle G and I have decided next time, we're coming at 5:30 pm again and just eating a set of pork buns each and two of these dessert sagos. Chinese comfort food, at its best. And maybe another set of pork buns take away - for the road.