Howard 7 December 2009 Chinese, Dinner, Lunch, Sydney, CBD 7 Comments  Print This Post  Email This Post

With the festive season creeping on me, I’ve hit the cheap eats lately. I went through a stage of visiting a few restaurants where I would walk away with a full stomach from a degustation but an empty wallet. In times of eating on a budget, one can always rely on the humble dumpling house.

I’ve been to Ashfield, Burwood and Chinatown for dumplings during the winter months but I always seem to come back to Chinatown Noodle Restaurant. Having spent my Uni days near the Chinatown area, visits here were few and far between. We use to eat around UTS meaning apart from the UTS broadway campus food court, we would frequent Subway, KFC, McDonalds and Ogalos quite regularly. Little did we know that Bourke St Bakery had a sister store nearby. If we felt like Asian food, we would goto Market City food court for some Mongolian Lamb hot plate or dodgy Laksa. Little did we know that hidden away were several dumpling houses such as Chinatown Noodle Restaurant near by.

The restaurant is nestled between Menya and a few Taiwanese eateries. The place next door usually has massive queues, from Students to curious first timers who we noticed were giving the restaurant a go because the queues were long.

Special braised eggplant $10.80

Some of the guys weren’t too excited when I said I was ordering braised eggplant, their opinions changed quickly after their first few bites. The eggplant is braised, resulting in something fleshy and soft however the outside is slightly crispy. It’s a bit like a banana fritter where you get a nice country exterior but a warm and moist banana flesh inside. This is my favourite dish on the menu, one of the few which are on my must order list.

Steamed pork & chive dumplings ($8.50 for 12)

My favourite combination of all is pork and chive, despite the guaranteed ‘breath test fail’ which chives give. There really isn’t much to say about this dumpling, that it is light on dumpling skin and generous on filling is good enough for me.

Jellyfish salad ($9)

To break things up a bit we order the jelly fish salad which has an abundance of cabbage, cucumber and jellyfish. It’s a refreshing dish, plenty of crunch and a bit of a sour kick with the vinegar based sauce. It’s served cold and it is very refreshing.

Salt and pepper crispy pork $13.80

I love the fried varieties of pork and chicken, with my favourite being fried salt and pepper spare ribs. Unfortunately, the pork here is nothing special with the batter dominating the pork. The serving is generous though, we find ourselves snacking on the pork at the end of our meal while chatting about office politics and shenanigans over tea before heading back to work.

Chinatown Noodle Restaurant
8 Quay St
Haymarket NSW 2000