Roti Road

"May the road rise up to meet you," goes the old Irish blessing to the weary traveller.  The road I have in mind, though, isn't going to get a chance to "rise up" to meet anybody - it's about to get hit with a stampede.

Roti Road is a brand-new Malaysian-Chinese restaurant that has just opened in Footscray on the site of the old Yummie. It's had an epic makeover, complete with glossy wood, red banquettes and green-leaved potted plants dotted throughout. 

We were wandering by, perfectly content with our dinner plans at an old favourite, when we saw that it was open for business.  Wild horses etc etc.  Thus you'll have to forgive the quality of the camera phone photos on this instance - I was a bit underprepared!

House-made roti with three dipping sauces of sorts (sweet and almost smoky chicken curry sauce, a lovely dal, and jammy sambal).  This roti is unreal.  The whole plate is $5.90 (YES) and you can add a very excellent chunky lamb (or beef, or chicken) curry for an extra $4.  This roti rivals Mamak - seriously, you have to try it.

Just some good old salt-and-pepper squid in a noodle basket.  This was done well.

These chicken dumplings looked gorgeous on the menu (indeed, most things do - they're beautifully photographed) but I found them a bit lacking in flavour and juice.  A bit of soy and vinegar, though, and Bob's your uncle.  The little "webs" aren't attached to the bases but are separate, which is unusual.

We were busy gorging ourselves when suddenly, an upbeat dance track came on and the stereo got turned up.  We peered about, wondering what was going on, but the staff were all looking at the floor with knowing smiles.  Suddenly, out of the kitchen bounded a chef, twirling and flipping a tissue-thin sheet of roti pastry like pizza!

He popped and locked his way through the whole track, all the while spinning his roti in the air, while the patrons whooped and cheered.  It was so unexpected and so joyful.  Apparently this happens every evening!

Can you find the roti?

One half of Roti Road is David Tran, who is the son of Yummie head honchos John and Annie Tran.  Devotees of their dumplings can rest easy that yum cha is still on offer daily until 3pm.  I had a quick chat to David after our meal and he confirmed that their head chef is Malaysian, and everything is made here from scratch, from the roti to the laksa paste.

Speaking of which, here's what you have to look forward to!

David shouted us this Matterhorn of a dessert - roti with condensed milk and icecream.  Completely OTT fun.

Roti Road is officially opening today, Friday 2 May.  I love the decor, which feels smart but not slick.  The food is really good and I can't wait to try more.  The toilets need some TLC but I believe that was meant to be happening over the last few days, plus some more artwork going on the walls.  Oh, and it's BYO for now but a licence is in the works.

No need to divert to Flemington, Footscrazies - when it comes to Malaysian food, we can go our own way now!

Roti Road (Facebook)

189-193 Barkly Street, Footscray

Phone:  9078 8878

Golden Horse yum cha

What are the three sweetest words in the English language?

"I love you"?

"Marry me, please"?

I say they're...

"YUM CHA DAILY" !

The Golden Horse has just opened on possibly Footscray's best corner site, and is ready to feed you these sweet nothings seven days a week.

There aren't many small yum cha restaurants like this around.  Usually when a yum cha place is small, it means no trolleys, or a very small range of food.  That's not the case here.  Golden Horse have a great range of dim sum, and it's not dumbed down - I spied chicken feet, pork ribs, tendon and silken tofu with prawn.

The small space does mean it's tricky to get a table of exactly the size you require, which means you might have to share a table.  I felt pretty sorry for the couple who had to share an eight-seater with me and my three grotty kids, but luckily the first trolley hit within seconds of sitting, so I could plug them with food straight away.

Shu mai, or "the ones with the dot on top" as they're known in our family.  They're made from prawn and pork with a wonton wrapper enclosing the bottom and sides.  These were really chunky and quite awesome.  Love how you get four to a basket rather than the usual three!

An equally generous serve of har gao or prawn dumplings.  Great.

Ridiculously amazing pastry - short, flaky, feathery and totally melt-in-the-mouth.  It was curled around a jammy BBQ pork filling.  Pounce the minute you see these come out of the kitchen.

These prawn noodle rolls are one of my favourite things - big noodle sheets (like lasagne sheets) flopped around prawns.  Pro tip - attack these with an empty bowl, ie, not one full of soy sauce.  The sauce with these is really light and sweet and deserves to be enjoyed on its own.

Crisp prawn rolls, I believe wrapped in rice paper, served with a little dish of mayo.  Also try the very similar golden brown-coloured variety, where the prawn is wrapped in fried bean curd skin (those ones come with a violently coloured yet delicious sweet-and-sour sauce).

Forgo the standard jasmine and order some chrysanthemum tea.  It has a fresh taste, a little like chamomile but much more gentle.

Ham sui gok, aka "football dumplings".  These have a glutinous rice flour batter around a filling - normally pork mince and a bit of mushroom.

These ones had a pretty filling with chopped pork and a little (what I think is) Chinese chive.  With the perfect crisp exterior and warm, slightly gummy interior, they were great.  Try these with chilli sauce.

Wasn't a fan of these panfried dumps - they were not hot enough.  Honestly, I'm never a huge fan of this type of dumpling (jiao zi) at yum cha.  If you want fried dumplings, go order a whole plate for ten or so bucks at 1+1 across the road.

This squid obviously never skipped leg day.  Even though these calamari tentacles were really big, they weren't tough, and the light coating was great.

Just enough room for char siu bao - fluffy steamed buns with a warm dob of BBQ pork in the middle.

Something to keep the kids quiet while I go to pay the bill (which, for all of the above for a very greedy adult and three kids, came to $61.80)...

...and after paying, I got chatting to Barry Diep, whose family restaurant this is.  All the yum cha is made in house.  There are some serious dumpling smarts going on here - one of the chefs is the ex-head chef of a Gold Leaf restaurant, and was coaxed out of retirement to saddle up the Golden Horse.  (Barry's uncle is one of the owners of the Gold Leaf chain, which includes Sunshine's Gold Leaf - a big favourite of mine.)

Barry's dad is also a chef at the Golden Horse.  He did his formal training in Hong Kong in the 1970s with an apparently very highly regarded chef of the time, and one of his fellow students was the current head chef of Laksa King.  He has been cooking since he was eight, including up and down the length of Vietnam.  As such, Barry reports that he was exposed to French techniques and ingredients.  His signature dish is snow crab with foie gras.  CAN YOU SAY HELL YES?!

Dad's other specialty is his XO sauce.  Barry kindly gave me this little pot to take home and try, while the kids all got a mango pudding each.  The sauce is a knockout and the puds were all fantastic - they had tiny little real mango bits in them.

I really like the Golden Horse.  Eating yum cha in a big dim sum barn can feel like you're on a conveyer belt, but this is a really friendly little place.  This site is an iconic one for the suburb, and it feels so right to have a big, busy yum cha restaurant full of people right here in the guts of the 'scray.  I love that everything's made here, and afterwards the insatiable salt/MSG-induced thirst that normally attacks me after a yum cha session was nowhere to be found.  Can't wait to come back in the evening and try the a la carte stuff.

You could say Footscray is now a one-horse town, and I think it's all the better for it.

Golden Horse

Cnr Hopkins and Leeds Streets, Footscray

In case you missed Friday's post - Footscray Food Blog's next round of independent tours is now on sale!  Get the dates and details here...

Chuan Wang

Ah, the Aussie counter meal. Such a neat little package - every flavour and texture taken care of. You've got a nice bit of something, be it a pork chop or some saucy rissoles, doing the umami thing. Some crisp roast taters, a wedge of squishy roast pumpkin (skin on, please) and a big helping of something green. It's your own little buffet, portioned on a plate.

Chinese food is not such a neat package. Gosh knows I try to make it so with my poor stir-fry efforts, chucking in some fried tofu along with carrot batons and wilted spinach. But - at least to my wandering eye, always visually eavesdropping on other people's meals - it seems that unless you're ordering a claypot or a soup, the right way to eat Chinese food is to order dishes that each sing in a different flavour and texture key - and then you've got yourself a lovely harmony.

However, unless you and your date fancy eating leftover cumin lamb and fish-flavoured eggplant for days on end, it's kind of tricky to attempt an eight-part harmony with just two stomachs. That's where Spicy Team comes in!

We're a raggle-taggle band who have realised that when it comes to attacking a Chinese menu, you can either choose strength in numbers, or a groaning stack of plastic takeaway boxes. We choose the former.

We assembled one dark night to lay siege to Chuan Wang, Footscray's new Sichuan destination. It was fantastic to have Claire from Melbourne Gastronome and partner Tom along for the ride!

Chuan Wang is where Lucky Star used to be, under the eaves of Footscray Market. It's been open for maybe six weeks now and I have to say, always looks very forlorn and empty.

This dish is variously translated as bang bang chicken, mouth-watering chicken or even saliva chicken. The "bang" comes from the cleaver used to chop up the bird, while the references to drool are indicators of how good this stuff tastes. And Chuan Wang's version tastes great. It's chockers with silky wedges of skin-on chicken, luxuriating in a thin, vinegary sauce seasoned with sugar, chilli and Sichuan peppercorns.

Do a bit of a textural two-step by ordering some garlicky cucumber salad for lots of crunch. Both these entrees are traditionally served cold and are perfect to drink beer by.

Indeed, I think I was raiding the beer fridge when these dan dan noodles arrived - they were all slurped up within minutes of hitting the table. I'm assured they were great, though.

Wherever you roam in China, the dumplings are different - from a fluffy, blended fish filling in eastern Shandong, to lamb and Chinese cabbage in northwestern Xinjiang. In Sichuan, zhong shui jiao or "Zhong dumplings" are a local specialty. They're filled with pork mince and served in a dipping sauce of soy and chilli. Chuan Wang's version was ace. (The filling was pink all over but it wasn't raw - not sure how that works, but either way, these dumplings are delicious.)

Next, we landed this incredible fish, reclining on crisp, battered chunks cut from the fillets on either side. It was scattered with very fine fried egg threads, chillis and surprise ingredient - curry leaves! The menu description (spicy salt and pepper sliced fish) and accompanying pic don't do this visually arresting dish justice.

Some good old dry-fried string beans, sprinkled with a little well-browned pork mince and garlic. I love how these beans manage to be crackly on the outside and tender in the middle.

Very nice fish-flavoured eggplant, so called because the seasoning used is traditional for fish recipes in Sichuan - big chunks of silky, luscious eggplant in a sweet, sticky sauce.

Water spinach in preserved tofu sauce was very nice...

...as was kung pao chicken, in a sour-sweet sauce with crunchy peanuts.

After we ordered, the waitress returned and told us the chef could see we liked Sichuan food and wanted to cook us his special chilli crab. How could we refuse? It arrived and so commenced lots of snapping, cracking and slurping as we teased morsel after morsel of meat from the claws. The top halves of the crab were just shell, which I assume is how it's meant to be - it's only $28 versus the much higher price I believe you'd pay for this many whole crabs. Whether or not you will like this comes down to how happy you are to quite literally get your hands very dirty. I loved it. Make sure you save room to eat all the wonderful crab-infused sauce on lots of white rice.

The one misfire was the cumin lamb, which came out looking like any other sizzling plate from here to Mildura, and to my taste was devoid of any cumin at all. Compare to Dainty Sichuan's archetypal version here.

All in all, we loved Chuan Wang. Could we please meet the chef, we asked? Chef Paul emerged from the kitchen, accepted our thanks and assured us that in the next few weeks he would be adding lots of Malaysian, Japanese and Thai dishes to the menu.

...

...

NOOOOOOOOO!

I don't know about you, but to me, a pan-Asian menu is as worrying as a voucher deal. We professed our love of Sichuan food and our concern at this development, but didn't press the point - ultimately it's Chuan Wang's business the way they want to proceed. They have been remarkably quiet every time I've gone past, and on the basis of our fantastic meal, they really don't deserve to be. Fika and Kuidaore and Temasek agree.

So, westies - if you fancy a dedicated Sichuan joint in our neighbourhood, go and support Chuan Wang in its current incarnation. Spicy Team and I will be in your corner!

Chuan Wang

190 Hopkins Street, Footscray

Phone:  9687 2288

1+1 Mandarin Dumpling Restaurant

"I'm going out for western Chinese tonight", I said.  "What", scoffed my friend M, sorting through his heirloom cabbage seeds.  "Sweet n' sour and black bean beef?"  "No", said I.  "Food from western China!"

That little exchange was actually over the new branch of Dolan Uyghur in the city (and M wasn't really sorting through his heirloom cabbage seeds, but I like to give him shit).  But it's not Dolan Uyghur I want to introduce you to - it's the new and improved 1+1.

First, a bit of back story.  China is about as big as the continental US, and while many tend to think of Chinese food as some kind of monolith comprising nothing but stir-fry, dumplings and rice, the country is rippled with regional variations.  In the northeast, there are hearty soups full of sauerkraut-like cabbage; in central Sichuan, they hubble and bubble with mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns and delicate white fish.

But the Xinjiang region at China's northwestern fringe is another kettle of fish altogether.  Here, the people are Muslim, speak a Turkic language that's written in Arabic script, and it's lamb that's the star of the show.  Check out the skewers and the pilaf above - they look more Middle Eastern than Chinese!  The Xinjiang area is arguably more connected culturally to its neighbouring central Asian republics like Turkestan and Uzbekistan than to Beijing.

1+1's been serving up Xinjiang (also known as Uyghur, although the terms aren't totally interchangeable) fare in Footscray for years, but recently acquired new owners.  They inserted "Mandarin" in the title and have done some zhooshing up.

We'd no sooner plonked down and started browsing when a helpful waitress appeared.  "Would you like some suggestions?"  Yes, please, we said, and she set about giving us a crash course in western Chinese food.  Highly recommended are the cold salads, handmade noodles and dumplings, and everything lamb.

Hot spicy cucumber, $9

You can't miss this cucumber salad.  It was a standout at the old 1+1 and it's still excellent, with crunchy cucumber batons in a zingy, vinegar-based dressing that tingled with just a little chilli.

Panfried veg dumpling, $11

I'd spoken to the owner of 1+1 when researching the Footscray Food Secrets project, and she singled out her vegie dumplings as a signature dish.  The skins are made in-house, with their vibrant green colour coming from cooked spinach that's then squeezed to obtain the juice.  These were as beautiful inside as out, with a filling of shredded emerald spinach spiked with ginger and garlic.  Dunk 'em in black vinegar - just help yourself from the condiment and cutlery shelf.

Tufun lamb fried noodle, $13.50

We had fun choosing which noodles to try.  Each variety had such mellifluous names ("tufun", "dindin", "uyghun") and each had a different shape, from large squares to long skinny tubes.  This noodle stir-fry of tasty, tender lamb, veg, and al dente noodle squares might not be that much of a looker, but it tasted fantastic.

The walls at 1+1 are dotted with interesting ephemera from the region, from musical instruments that look like Greek bouzoukis to this piccie which, to me, really speaks to the Silk Road which runs through Xinjiang.  If you go to Dolan in the city, it's kind of a head trip to see Chinese characters on the menu and huge Turkish carpets on the walls!

Much as I admit I'm partial to the very occasional sneaky sweet n' sour pork, this is the western Chinese food I like best.  Highly recommended.

1+1 Mandarin Dumpling
84 Hopkins Street, Footscray
Phone: 9687 8988
Hours:  Thurs-Mon noon-10pm (closed Wednesdays)