This old school Cantonese restaurant (Level 1/15 Celestial Avenue, Melbourne, tel : +61 3 9663 4759) which opens late into the night is apparently an institution in Melbourne's Chinatown. From what I gather, it's been in business for almost half a century.
The portal and the path beyond was filled with scripts from past visitors that attempted to immortalise their visits in very small ways.
We had half a roast duck. The bird was much better tasting that its mundane looks suggested. Fat under the skin, tender even for breast meat and adequately flavoured. Plum sauce was the proverbial icing on the cake if one was into the icing.
A popular dish from their restaurant was their pippies in XO sauce and Chinese donuts (it's 油条/油炸鬼 and a separate charge applies). Pippies are clams if anyone was wondering. These were sautéed in a mildly spicy umami brown sauce with 油条 below. Clams were plump and not bad tasting. The XO sauce didn't taste like the ones that I am familiar with.
I was looking forward to their blood curd congee. Did not like it. It has a flavour like pig intestines that hadn't been properly processed and that flavour was also present in the blood curds. I was disappointed by it.
There's a special fried rice on their menu which is what many would typically recognise as yang zhou fried rice. Eggs, bits of char siew, prawns, bean sprouts and spring onions. Flavour's passable, not memorable. I think it lacked smokiness or fish sauce. Or both.
There was a claypot braised lamb brisket special when we were there. Sauce was nice and there's adequate intrinsic flavour from the lamb. Would have been great if the lamb was much more tender but it kinda stopped being good there. Pity.
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