Halva To Dim Sum

Here's some of the food we ate in Melbourne:

1) Breakfast at Chimmy's (342-344 Bridge Rd, Richmond)

You don't have to wear an LBD and your mom's pearl necklace to eat brekkie at Chimmy's. The food was very good too.


Madrid omelette with cubes of potatoes and chorizos was yummy, AUD15.80/USD  /RM.


Fruit bread, can't remember price, was heavy and sweet and good with a hot cup of coffee.

2) Dinner at Wennie and Josh's



This was dinner cooked by Josh, fiance of Yi's ex-roomie Wennie, who's going to be Josh's wife in two months. Thanks, Josh & Wennie, the delicious dinner and your company made it one of my most enjoyable and relaxed evenings in Melbourne. Both of you make sure a beautiful couple and I'm looking forward to your wedding photos (gorgeous gown, Wennie) and your visit soon.

3) Seafood lunch at Hooked (172 Chapel St)



Hooked was given a good review by Gourmet as a place for healthy seafood, so I ordered the fish pan-fried instead of battered and deep-fried. Unfortunately, the fish was not impressive, tasting a notch better than dory which I dislike. The rest of the stuff on the plate was good, especially the salad and the pesto. Which is an insult, considering that seafood is the mainstay of the restaurant.  At AUD18.90, not cheap, not too expensive.

4) Yum cha/Dim sum at Crystal Jade (not related to the xaiolongbao and la mien Crystal Jade chain of restaurants), at the corner of Little Bourke St and Russell St,  right at the entrance to Chinatown.

Looks are deceiving. The ha gow was authentic in that it had strips of bamboo shoots but the prawns were minced and not springy to the bite, and worse, didn't have any prawn flavor. The cheong fun was too soft while the beef filling was bland and flavorless and that's how it was with all the other dim sum. The meat just tasted uniformly tender and tasteless. Btw, do you, like me, HAVE to have mustard sauce with ha gow (prawn dumplings)? 


Crystal Jade's dim sum (dainty Chinese mouthfuls, mostly steamed, eaten for breakfast and lunch over copious cups of tea) looked delicious but tasted otherwise--the meat, whether pork or prawns or beef, were overdosed with bicarb of soda, making them tender and swollen (yes, tender and swollen) but tasteless. In fact, I was disappointed with the Chinese food in Melbourne this trip because the meat and seafood were flavorless and had the same texture, tender and soft, so that if you were blindfolded, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between chicken, pork and beef and all fish would taste the same. The sad thing is, I think most young people who grew up eating meat marinaded with bicarb of soda think that's how meat tastes in Chinese restaurants. Using bicarb of soda in meat may be a world-wide practice with Chinese food now, and that's truly bad.

I am convinced now that Hong Kong's dim sum is  still the best in the world, whether it's at traditional dim sum restaurants or the newer classier ones. In Hong Kong, if the food is not up to par, the rent and picky customers would kill the restaurant within a month. In such Darwinian circumstances, it's no wonder HK is the food heaven (IMHO) of the world.

5) Halva, Prahran Market


This halva 'cake' was about 20 cm/8" tall and full of nutty flavors.

Halva is a yummy confectionary found in the Middle East, Turkey, Eastern Europe, Africa, India, Greece and many other countries. In China, dragon's beard is a kind of halva floss. I'm not sure what halva this was--I'm guessing it was Turkish, based on the rose petals-covered Turkish delight next to it. I loved it and would choose it over baklava anytime.