Barbie Kitchen

My new favourite - Barbie Kitchen!!!

Yes, I am KIDDING!  It's not that type of Barbie Kitchen I'm talking about, it's this kind:

Chinese Spicy & Barbie Kitchen is a new Szechuan eatery that has opened in Flemington/Kensington (I get so confused which side of the street is which) and is already one of my all-time favourite restaurants.

Firstly the menus are gorgeous - big shiny pages with droolworthy pics and not so drool-y names like "saliva chicken" (better translated as "mouthwatering chicken").  So many non-Anglo restaurants have very perfunctory menu descriptions - you know, "chicken on rice" or "spicy fish" - that if you want to branch out and try something new, you're never sure if your dish will be big, small, swimming in chilli or full of offal.  Barbie Kitchen's pics mean it's easy and exciting to try things you might not otherwise place a bet on.

The fitout is simple but it works - big, satisfying, hand hewn-look wooden tables with low, cushy chairs, perfect for adults and kids alike. 

Themed tissue boxes, aesthetically-pleasing tableware and decor and the cleanest high chair this side of Chengdu.  With all this relative luxury, it would be easy to assume that Barbie Kitchen is not authentic, too expensive or both, but far from it.

A complimentary appetiser - thick kelp-like seaweed dressed with chilli, garlic and a hint of sesame.  Gorgeous!  The menu here features traditional Szechuan dishes, what I think of as Northern-Chinese style fat white dumplings, as well as a whole selection of BBQ-grilled meats and vegies (the latter only available at dinner time).

Dry fried string beans, $14.80

This is a classic - well-fried green beans and pork mince with XO sauce, which is an umami-rich blend of dried seafood, Chinese prosciutto-like ham and chilli.  This was a truly awesome version - sweet mince, fresh beans and lots of rich, satisfying, lipsmacking hum from the XO.  It wasn't too hot for the kids who loved it (this is very easy to make at home although I don't deep-fry the beans!  Fry garlic, brown pork, add beans, add couple spoons XO, season with soy and perhaps a little white sugar, done!)

Spicy eggplant, $12.80

This is a first for me and I am a total convert.  The eggplant has been peeled and I suspect fried, to emerge velvety-soft, sweet, slippery and luscious.  The sauce is pleasantly oily, sweet, with a hint of vinegar.  If you want to know how good it was, my 3-year-old could not stop eating it.  We had these with bowls of rice for $1 each.

Leeks, $3 per "string"

The first of our BBQ dishes - these were delish.  I'm not sure what sort of leek they were as they seemed like a cross between a sping onion and a chive, but they were fabulous.

Lily mushroom pork, $2.50 each and squid, $2 each

These were both lovely - the "lily mushroom pork" (which I wouldn't have ordered but for the photo, which showed it as pork wrapped around enoki mushrooms) was a delicious contrast of textures and flavours, while the squid was tender and tasty.

Chilli, $1.50

All the BBQ dishes were dusted with a rustic chilli-and-cumin blend which was delicious and seemingly very un-Chinese, but it did get a bit same-same over time.  In my opinion, just order a few select BBQ dishes and round out your meal with selections from other parts of the menu to get the most flavour variety.  Perhaps the BBQ'd chicken skin next time?  Take that, KFC Double Down "burger"!

Pork dumplings, $7 for 15!!!

LURVED these dumplings.  They are really a huge step up from the likes of Camy - the meat inside is luscious and juicy, like Hu Tong's dumplings - no hard meaty nuggets.  The pastry is just feather-light, not at all leaden or chewy as these can sometimes be.  There's also a vegetarian option (which I always think are best pan-fried).

Steamed buns, $9.8 for 6

These are somewhat like xiao long bao but are juicy rather than soupy.  The same sweet, tasty filling of pork and spring onion/leek-y vegetable.  Apparently these differ in that they are made with self-raising flour, giving them a more bun-like consistency.  I prefer the former simpler version.  Still, these were delicious!

Laoshan Haisheng Pie, $2

Yum yum yum - again, the pork and vegetable filling, this time in a large pupusa-like parcel panfried and squished down.  Super juicy, crispy - fabulous!

At the risk of being disloyal to my local non-Cantonese Chinese restaurants, 1+1 and Dumplings and More, Barbie Kitchen is, I have to say, far superior.  I haven't had Szechuan food this good in years - I normally prefer Cantonese as it seems less oily and lighter/more complex in flavour, but this was unreal.  I honestly can't wait to go back.  Even if it had wonky chairs and greasy chopsticks I would love it, so the decor is the icing on the cake.

This is definitely my kind of Barbie Kitchen - although I do like that the Barbie has a glass of champagne on the counter - that much is realistic!

See Billy and Bryan for more thumbs up.  Billy has a new address and look - check it out!

Chinese Spicy & Barbie Kitchen

311 Racecourse Rd, Kensington (map)

Phone:  9372 5218

Hours:  7 days, 11:30am-3:00pm, 5:30pm-11.00pm

Wheelchair Access
Level entry 

Foodcrazy

If you have no expectations, you will never be disappointed.  In terms of eating out, arguably the most delight comes from the places you have little or no expectations about - the round-eyes place your friend has insisted you go to which ends up being really good, or the empty, foreboding restaurant that ends up serving you a delicious meal (and fills up with people just after you have the courage to sit down and order).  Unfortunately, the opposite is too often true - the places we most build up can let us down, whether through their own shortfalls or perhaps our stratospheric expectations.

A friend and I have been excited about "the hot pot place in Barkly Street" for as long as I can remember.  It sits under a new apartment building and took a couple of years to finally get its somewhat odd name, "Foodcrazy", displayed on the windows.  Numerous attempts to go there have continually been foiled.  Finally we made a date.  Text messages went back and forth in a flurry - some I think were nothing but "HOT POT!!" in excited capitals.  The hot pot night approached and finally arrived.

Foodcrazy serves Szechuan food from the Szechuan region in central China.  This has become quite popular in Melbourne over the last few years and is characterised by the mouth-numbing Szechuan peppercorn and liberal use of whole dried chillies.  Bean sauce is a staple of Szechuan cooking, as used in Grandpa's special noodles as well as the classic Szechuan dish "ma po tofu" or "pockmarked grandmother's tofu", a warm, comforting dish of pork mince and silky tofu.  The hot pot - a bubbling pot of light stock in which diners cook their choice of meats, starches and vegetables at the table - is popular in different guises across Asia, but particularly so in the Szechuan provinces of Chengdu and Chongqing.

Upon entering Foodcrazy one is asked if one would like the normal menu or the hot pot menu.  Accordingly there are two different types of marble table in the restaurant - a regular table and one with a large circular well cut into it, under which sits a small gas burner.

The hot pot menu itself is two photocopied "tick-the-box" order forms.  One can go a la carte, paying around $15 for a pot of broth and then adding on the various meats, vegetables, condiments and sides.  We chose to go with the buffet where for $25 each we could choose an almost unlimited array of goodies to dip in our "double-taste" hot pot, as well as a number of cold side dishes and dipping sauces.

First came a delicious chicken salad in "special sauce".  Poached cold chicken, spring onion and crunchy peanuts in an oily, chilli sauce - I believe this is the famous Sichuan mala sauce?  Love the 'Nanna's soap dish' plate.

We also chose the Szechuan pickled vegetables.  These were different to those I had had at Hu Tong recently - while Hu Tong's were spicy, a little oily and hot with green chilli, these were large, sweet and very mild - similar to Vietnamese pickled vegetables.  Still, they were really good.

The moment arrived - our 'double taste' hot pot was finally here!!  One side was evidently a very mild broth, perhaps chicken-based, while the other was a very dark brew, slicked with oil and full of bobbing Szechuan peppercorns and dried chillies.

Our goodies arrived and were placed on this neat little shelf at the side of the table.  Above you can see 'frozen tofu', lamb (strange, circular, very fatty frozen slices), 'seasonal vegetables' (wong bok) and underneath 'sweet potato noodles'.

We also ordered the chef's special beef as well as the 'blue crab'.  Other choices on the menu were gluten (probably like seitan?) and 'mini muffin'.

We chose a sesame sauce which was very similar to tahini, garlic oil, and paid $1 extra for chive flower paste.

So, time to get stuck in.  We didn't really know where to start, though.  We tried to ask the staff what was meant to go where - was there some kind of system?  Did the noodles go in one broth and the meat in the other?  Which sauce was for what thing?  They were friendly but a little bemused by the questions, just saying that yes, you cook it all in there, before leaving us to it.

So we did our best.  We dipped, we swirled, we scooped... and we did not like it.  The noodles got lost somewhere at the bottom of each murky broth and were extremely hard to fish out, constantly slithering back in like a giant squid's tentacles off an ancient mariner's ship.  The lamb slices were unpleasantly fatty, like streaky bacon, but without the corresponding smoky, delicious flavour.  The 'chef's special beef' was heavily treated with bicarb, giving it a strange spongy consistency.  The 'frozen tofu' was just that - frozen tofu - and if you have ever, like me, left your tofu up the back of your crappy share-house fridge only to find it rock hard, you will know that tofu does not freeze well, losing its structure and becoming soft, watery and mushy.  Not nice.

We tried to be positive.  I tipped various sauces on various things, having no idea what went with what.  The chive flower paste, although it had an intriguing grassy scent, was so heavily salted it was inedible.  I did enjoy the sesame paste, though, and the cabbage was quite nice.  I did not like the chilli broth at all - the Szechuan peppercorns were almost whole and gave the noodles fished out of there an odd gritty consistency.  The mild broth was flavourless.

To add insult to injury, we never received our 'blue crab', and upon reminding the staff we were summarily presented with a plate of frozen crab sticks.

Eventually we both stopped eating - still hungry, but with totally no appetite for the food.  We scrambled for the last of the pickled vegetables.  Even the cold chicken salad had lost its shine by then, the oil separating from the dressing and making it greasy and unappealing.

Upon leaving my friend remarked that it had seemed like fast food.  I didn't know what she meant but after some research, it appears that Foodcrazy is part of a Chinese chain who have two other restaurants in Melbourne.  I hesitate to totally bag it, though.  We had no idea what we were doing, really, and to say that the hot pot at Foodcrazy is bad or indeed that Szechuan hot pot is bad is like pouring orange juice over Weet Bix and then saying Weet Bix are bad.

I am reminded of the time I sat next to an older Asian gentleman on a flight somewhere.  We were presented with a scone and I watched him cut it up with his knife and fork and eat it, without butter, jam, or anything.  It must have tasted horrible.  I wanted to tap him on the shoulder and tell him that he should cut it in half, spread it with a little butter and/or jam, ask for a cup of milky tea and then enjoy what is quite a nice afternoon snack - not to mention the virtues of homemade scones with stawberry jam and stiffly whipped cream with a pot of proper leaf tea.  So perhaps there was a secret to the Szechuan hot pot we did not grasp.

Luckily our enthusiasm for 'HOT POT!!' has not waned and we next plan to try Vietnamese 'steamboat', hoping that it will have perhaps a clearer stock and fresher ingredients.  The anticipation is building.  We really should keep our expectations in check... but anticipation is the purest form of pleasure.

Foodcrazy
Shop 2-3, 250 Barkly St, Footscray (map)

Phone: 9687 2361

HuTong Dumpling Bar

I don't get in to town as often as I would like.  When pregnant with my last baby, I saw a Chinese herbalist in Russell St regularly.  Organising babysitting and then braving PT into the city for Chinese medicine seems ridiculous when Footscray's Barkly Street is lined with practitioners.  If I was totally honest, it was probably the excuse of having an hour or two to myself to wander about in the laneways, eating interesting food, feeling cosmopolitan - well, as cosmopolitan as you can feel with cankles and stained, third-hand maternity wear.

If you are a regular reader of food blogs of the Melbourne variety, you would know that every so often something really blows up.  Recently it was Earl Canteen and its "sex sandwich;" a little while ago, it was HuTong Dumpling Bar's xiao long bao, dumplings filled with meat and soup.  I had still not tried these, and a farewell dinner before my big trip stateside with the scrumptious K was the perfect excuse to catch up with everyone else.

Entry is off Market Lane, opposite the Flower Drum.  This might seem intimidating, but let me tell you, HuTong is a worthy neighbour to this grand old Melbourne dame.

On the lower level, you can watch the chefs deftly filling and pleating their dumpling wares.  We were ushered upstairs to our reserved table.  The decor is really lovely, lots of bare wood, brick, and a sense of height rather than width.  It feels very Melbourne inside.  I was so excited to peruse the menu, which has every dish's origin within China designated, plus red stamps for house specialties.  I have heard service is poor, but we were nothing but impressed.

"Shao-Long Bao" (aka Xiao Long Bao) - East China

Much lyric has been waxed over these little parcels of delight, and for good reason.  They are absolutely divine!  You ease them very delicately from the steamer basket into a wide, Chinese-style spoon, pierce with a chopstick or your teeth, and either suck out the soup inside or let it drain into the spoon before slurping. 

I believe the soup is introduced by enclosing gelatinized stock inside the raw dumpling.  Now, my favourite things are a) dumplings, and b) homemade stock, so these just hit the jackpot for me.  The soup is so flavoursome, the skin is excellent, and the deliciate mince inside is somehow unified between the two - no hard, meaty nugget here.  Absolutely amazing!

"Wantons with Hot Chilli Sauce" - Szechuan

This might look terrifying, but even if you are not a chilli addict like me, it's not that hot.  The wontons were so delicate, with lovely slippery skins that were made even better slicked with chilli oil.  Wonderful.

Pan-Fried Dumplings - Shanghai

These panfried dumplings were also excellent - far from the grainy specimens with greasy bottoms and tough skins that other dumpling barns sell.  The xiao long bao and wontons were the standouts, though.

Dong Po Square Soft Pork - Hangzhou

This glistening, ruby-red chunk of pork belly was lovely.  It was meltingly soft and very sweet.  We couldn't bring ourselves to eat the wobbly fat, though.  I kind of have to have my fat crispy, like in Chinese crispy BBQ pork or American bacon, ya know?

Szechuan Picked Vegetables

These vegies were great - a mix of carrot, radish, and a sort of pale green chilli.  They were very tangy with vinegar and salt - not at all sweet, unlike Vietnamese pickled vegetables.  The whole dish tasted very Mexican to me, which was a total surprise, but a happy one.

It is so exciting to find dumplings made with such love and care, and with such quality ingredients.  As you might know, I do love yum cha, but it can all be a bit slap-dash.  I'm also yet to find a northern-Chinese dumpling place that I absolutely adore. Many teeter too precariously on the homely/grotty border, while others can't hide cheap fillings.  Of course I love low prices, but I am more than happy to pay more for a comparative rise in quality.  HuTong has the quality I am looking for, and it is not even that expensive.  I also love being able to see the origins of all the different dishes, and to be reminded of the enormous diversity of cuisine within China.  I look forward to many more gastronomic adventures behing HuTong's door.



HuTong Dumpling Bar
14-16 Market Lane, Melbourne (map)
Hours: Daily 11am-3pm, 5.30pm-10.30pm (til 11.30pm Fri & Sat)
Phone: 9650 8128