We went out to Yum Cha lunch on Australia Day, with Po-Po, and Goong-Goong, and Stirfry Ninja. This came about because the previous week, Decay sent me a link to a review of a bunch of yum cha places, and when I sent that over to Stirfry while wondering out loud in gchat whether they were up for some yum cha on the public holiday, Mum rang back, Decay answered the phone, and was met with a question - whether we had any specific places in mind for this yum cha. We generally trust Mum and Dad's judgement - they seem to have their ears to the ground on all things related to delicious Chinese food, but after a bit of ringing around of places Mum wanted to try, they either didn't offer yum cha, or weren't open on the Tuesday. Which is a roundabout way of explaining how we ended up at Superstars again. I think X's first experience of yum cha was at Superstars, and he would've been maybe 6 weeks old?
Anyways, pics after the jump - it's only taken me about 4 days since I started typing this, to actually finish it!
Anyways, pics after the jump - it's only taken me about 4 days since I started typing this, to actually finish it!
This is Lor Mai Fan, with chicken... so I guess that makes it Lor Mai Gai (: Sticky rice wrapped up in a lotus leaf, with chickeny bits. X demolished at least half of one of these packages.
Scallop and Prawn dumplings. Reasonable prawns, scallops that weren't particularly scallopy but not offensive in any way.
Har Gao - prawn dumplings. X liked the insides, but wasn't so much of a fan of the wrapper. As far as wrappers go these were ok - not too thick. The dumplings were kind of on the big side, but not the biggest we've seen. I kind of prefer the little ones - they're daintier, and also, don't fill you up so quickly so you can try more stuff!
Siu Mai - pork and prawn dumpling, half a bite taken by Decay (with chilli sauce!), pic taken just before he ate the other half. Again, tasty, but kind of big.
X yumming up some dumpling bits. We decided to let him use the bowl provided at the table, by sitting it in his rimmed plate. It meant that even if there was a little bit of sliding about, there was less chance that the bowl would go flying off the table flinging dumpling bits everywhere.
Pai Guat - Pork spare ribs with garlic and soy sauce and probably some other things. Tasty, slippery little morsels of meat. Very garlicky this time!
Beef and coriander meatballs. Tasty but super punch of coriander flavour this time around. Texture was kind of spongy soft, which X didn't seem to mind.
Prawn bits wrapped in beancurd sheets, then fried. Crunchy and bouncy, all at once!
Lai Wong Bao, innards - this is a sweet bun with a custardy inside.
Char Siu Bao, innards - steamed bbq pork buns, yum! X used to LOOOOVE these buns, but he seems to have gone off them lately...
Black Sesame bun.
Black Sesame bun, innards. The inside filling was nice, but there wasn't enough of it to make up for the tough bun - it felt like these had been nuked in the microwave to reheat, and they hadn't survived the treatment well.
We also had Dou Fu Fa (Bean curds in sweet gingery syrup) as part of dessert, but no pic, because taking a pic of some white tofu in a white bowl, with a white spoon, on a white tablecloth, doesn't make for a particularly interesting pic.
Overall, Superstars is reasonable for yum cha as a local. There are better places in Melbourne, but they're a longer drive away from where we are.
The prawn with bean curd one is xiān zhú juǎn. You can canto-ify that however you like. Here's a bunch of Chinese words about it on the Chinese wiki http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%AE%AE%E7%AB%B9%E5%8D%B7
Seen jook guun? (I'd put umlauts or something over the U, I guess.