Column 1:
a. 210525Tu-Melbourne’HeraldSun’-YumCha. See:
www.facebook.com/shandongmama
daintysichuanfood.com.au
b. 200927Su ‘CanberraTimes’ – Sitwell, a ‘History of eating out’ [see item below]
c. 211110W-Melbourne’HeraldSun’-prime.minister-electioneering-BoxHill-Chinese.restaurant-spring.rolls
d. 211106Sa-Melbourne’HeraldSun’-SpicyDuck
Column 2:
a. 21062 Melbourne ‘Herald Sun’ – Vermont South (Vic.): Crown Palace (Chinese); Yes Sushi; Rich Mahal (Indian, Malaysian, Sri Lankan)
b. 210425Su-NewsCorp-Escape-Melbourne-SupperInn-chinese.restaurant.
c. 210507F-Melbourne’HeraldSun’ – Bayswater – U-Dumpling and PhoKhaTran Vietnamese.
d. 210323Tu-Melbourne’HeraldSun’ – cbd – New Shanghai soup dumplings.
Column 3.
ab and 4a. 211101M-‘SMH’-Marigold-yumcha-Chinese.food.
c. Roderick Smith.
d. 210509Su-NewsCorp-‘Escape’-Melbourne-Chinatown-Chan’sYumCha
Column 4.
b. 210318-mix106-Chisholm(ACT)-LisaChineseRestaurant
c. 210202-Melbourne’HeraldSun’-BurwoodEast(Vic.)-ChinaBarSignature (Asian buffet)
www.chinabargroup.com/china-bar-signature-asian-buffet
d. 210611F-Melbourne’HeraldSun’-ChinaBox
Tues.25.5.21 Melbourne ‘Herald Sun’ CHEFS DISH UP LATE NIGHT YUM CHA. KARA IRVING
Tony Tan with Shandong Mama’s Meiyan Wang, left, and Tina Li of Dainty Sichuan. Picture: NICKI CONNOLLY
TONY Tan has shaken up the trolleywheeling and tea-laden lunchtime yum cha tradition.
The influential chef is behind the Late Night Yum Cha event at RISING festival next week.
Melbourne restaurants HuTong, Crystal Jade, Dainty Sichuan and Shandong Mama will serve a crosssection of regional Chinese dishes at the Mess Hall at Melbourne Town Hall.
Friday and Saturday are already sold out for the four-night event, with only late sittings available on Wednesday and Thursday.
Shandong Mama’s Meiyan Wang will bust out the zucchini dumplings and Dainty Sichuan’s Tina Li will have the lamb skewers on high rotation.
Meanwhile, mobile payment platform Mr Yum has partnered with the festival for fuss-free ordering.
Late Night Yum Cha runs from June 2-5 at Melbourne Town Hall. $55 per person + booking fee. Only 11pm sessions available on Wednesday and Thursday.
SEPTEMBER 27 2020 William Sitwell has written a loving history of restaurants through the ages. Colin Steele
Restaurants have changed forever under COVID restrictions. Picture: Shutterstock
The Restaurant: a History of Eating Out, by William Sitwell. Simon & Schuster. $49.99.
William Sitwell, a descendant of the famous British Sitwell literary family, is food critic for the British Daily Telegraph, TV broadcaster and author of several food books, including Eggs or Anarchy (2016).
When Sitwell wrote the last chapter of The Restaurant, titled "The Future Of Eating Out", he had no idea that COVID-19 would so dramatically impact the future of restaurant. His book, he says, has thus become "a vicarious vision of what we until recently so loved and took for granted".
Sitwell covers, in 18 chapters, with numerous colour illustrations, culinary history from Pompeii to the present day. It is necessarily selective: "There is much in the story of the restaurant that is not in there. But then it’s my story and that’s my privilege . . . Restaurants are a key part of our culture, a cornerstone even. So this is a story of the human journey."
Sitwell begins in Pompeii, with its 160 bars and restaurants, many serving a form of pizza with white wine, a few even doubling up as brothels. He then jumps to Chaucer’s London; Ibn Battuta, who ate in 40 countries over 32 years in the 14th century and to the kitchens and "sharing dishes" of the 15th-century Ottoman court of Sultan Murad II.
The dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII led to the loss of monastic rest houses. As a result, 24,000 alehouses had sprung up by 1577. In the late 17th century, coffeehouses were increasingly popular, although wives complained coffee was making their husbands impotent, "mere cock- sparrows".
The word "restaurant", popularised in 1765 by M. Boulanger in Paris, derives from the French verb restaurer, to restore. Madame Guillotine, during the French Revolution, led to the number of restaurants in Paris growing from 50 in 1789 to 500 in 1799, as the chefs of executed aristocrats had to find new venues.
French gastronome Brillat- Savarin once said, "The fate of nations depends on how they eat". London lagged behind the haute cuisine of Paris in the 19th century, although London clubs stood out, such as the Reform, where in 1841 French chef Alexis Soyer pioneered the clean gas stove as part of "the most famous and influential working kitchen in Europe".
The Hindoostane Coffee House, the first Indian restaurant in London, was opened in 1810, offering retired East Indian Company officials ‘Indian dishes in the highest perfection". In contrast, the Parsi Bombay restaurant, Britannia & Co, which has its own chapter, was opened in 1923 by Rashid Kohinoor and gained its initial success from serving comfort food to British residents.
Sitwell worries that when Britannia’s lease expires in 2022, it might become a McDonald’s, whose origins are described along with those of Bell. Sitwell documents, in "The Invention of the Sushi Conveyor Belt", another fast-food global phenomenon, in Yoshiaki Shiraishi’s sushis, launched in 1958 as circling "the room like satellites in the sky".
Sitwell takes the reader back to earth when describing the bleak English culinary scene after the Second World War, epitomised by the creamed spam casserole of Simpsons restaurant and the sardine, mashed potato and dried egg powder at Prunier’s, although on the plus side there was little obesity.
Of the 484 British restaurants, hotels and pubs covered in Raymond Postgate’s first Good Food Guide (1951), only 11 served "foreign food", all being European except for one Chinese restaurant. Sitwell comments, "Elizabeth David may have brought a dose of romanticism to the nation with her A Book of Mediterranean Food (1950), but, for most, it was no more real than a quixotic novel".
In the 1960s, the Forte chain provided mass-market food at affordable prices, but it needed the Roux brothers, Michel and Albert, to expand British culinary horizons when they opened Le Gavroche in 1967. Le Gavroche and Simon Hopkinson’s Bibendum have their own chapters, while Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck, Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse in San Francisco and El Bulli in Barcelona are amongst the major restaurants featured.
Sitwell notes, "Restaurants don’t exist in a vacuum….They form as part of our culture, for good or ill, as a part of (or in spite of) the political landscape or the economic scene." Even pre-COVID, few restaurants operated above a five or six per cent margin.
Keith Floyd once said being a chef "kills marriages, kills relationships and it kills life". COVID restrictions are currently killing many restaurants. Sitwell acknowledges the industry will take some time to recover, but when it does, "the genuine restaurant (not a place funded by lunatics and run by food faddists), run by people who have a passion to feed people and a belief in the principles of hospitality, has a firm place in the future of dining out".
www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6938939/long-may-the-resta…
Hospitality staff shortages causing headaches for regional Vic businesses. Brooke Grebert-Craig and Brayden May November 6, 2021 Bass Coast News
Regional Victorian hospitality businesses will welcome the influx of tourists as states reopen but there’s a reason why some are being forced to shut their doors.
Robyn Schultz (left) and her staff at The Riverdeck Kitchen in Bright. Picture: Supplied
Regional Victoria will be booming this summer as it welcomes Melburnians back and states reopen but there are serious fears there won’t be enough staff to match the demand.
City slickers celebrated being allowed back into the regions as restrictions lifted last weekend.
But some regional hospitality businesses say they were forced to close their doors because they didn’t have enough employees to serve the increase in visitors.
In Echuca, on the Murray River, Shona Emmerson from Brownz Courtyard Cafe said it wasn’t viable to open on Monday or Tuesday.
It was the first time in 12 years she had been forced to shut on a public holiday.
“We’re desperate for workers and anyone who is employed here will receive the necessary training,” Ms Emmerson said.
“Visitors to our town expect to be served and that’s understandable because they’ve chosen to spend time here.
“With so many businesses closed it might have turned them off from coming back.”
It comes after towns on the NSW side of the river prepare to be inundated with visitors after the re-opening of the border between NSW and Victoria.
Fully vaccinated Victorians can now travel into NSW freely, meanwhile, Victoria will welcome all people from NSW regardless of vaccination status.
Mulwala Water Ski Club chief executive Peter Duncan said businesses on both sides of the Murray River had been struggling.
“We could probably do with another 10 to 12 staff just to help us really get going then we would reassess as we get to peak period during Christmas and the New Year,” Mr Duncan said.
“Our staff need to have their hours balanced because we don’t want them to burn out.
“Businesses aren’t just competing for customers, they’re competing for staff as well.”
Nathan Murphy (left) and his staff at The Spicy Duck in San Remo. Picture: Supplied
Tourism North East, the regional tourism board for Victoria’s high country, on Friday launched a new online jobs platform to attract tourism and hospitality workers from metropolitan Melbourne to the region ahead of summer.
Latest figures showed of the 3147 job vacancies in North East Victoria in September 2021, more than 360 were in the hospitality, retail and service industries.
The Riverdeck Kitchen’s Robyn Schultz said there was a critical staff shortage in Bright due to lockdown and the 2020 bushfires.
“A lot of casual staff that normally work in Bright in the summer and the snowfields in winter left the area due to the bushfires and never returned as Covid closed the ski season in 2020 and restricted the season in 2021,” she said.
Ms Schultz said other workers left the industry due the increased stress of Covid restrictions.
“Many staff sorted less stressful working conditions in other industries,” she said.
If Ms Shultz can’t find enough workers for the summer, she said she would be forced to reduce customer numbers or operating hours.
“Normally we trade seven days a week but from February to April 2021 we needed to close one day a week to manage staff days off and give ourselves a day off,” she said.
“We may have to do this again.”
The Spicy Duck’s Nathan Murphy said fortunately year 12 graduates applied for vacant positions at his San Remo business last year but he was doubtful it would be the same this summer.
“This year may be different with borders opening and young people probably wanting to travel outside of Victoria,” he said.
Mr Murphy said without tourists, businesses couldn’t rely on the limited local economy.
“Given much of the local population rely on tourism for employment, there has been less opportunities for locals to gain work and therefore less money circulating around the local economy,” he said.
“We would usually open for lunch and dinner during school holiday periods but over the last two years we have only opened for dinner as there was not enough day trade.”
More Coverage
Cafe closes to dine-in customers to avoid vax mandate
www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/bass-coast/hospitality-staff-…
Yum cha near me: Vermont South Crown Palace, Han Palace, closes on Burwood Highway. Kimberley Seedy June 22, 2021 Whitehorse Leader
It’s played host to countless birthday feasts, but now a longstanding Vermont South restaurant is shutting its doors.
The former Crown Palace restaurant in Vermont South has closed. Picture: Hudson Bond
A popular Vermont South Chinese restaurant is shutting its doors, with the prominent Burwood Highway site now up for lease.
Crown Palace Chinese Restaurant, formerly known as Han Palace, has been a favourite dining spot for yum cha fans for many years, with its huge “Yum Cha Daily” sign on Burwood Highway greeting customers.
Recently a For Lease sign was placed on the restaurant by commercial agents Hudson Bond Real Estate, and a closing down sign is on the front door.
The listing on the Real Commercial website describes the site, within Vermont South Shopping Centre, as versatile and perfect for a range of uses including retail, office, showroom and medical.
The 660sq m building area includes commercial kitchen facilities.
Reviews on TripAdvisor describe the restaurant as being “a great place for yum cha” despite its ageing decor.
More Coverage
New 24-hour eateries coming to Burwood One
Popular Asian buffet makes a comeback
* So many people are out of work. What a horrible response to covid. It has decimated Melbourne
www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/east/yum-cha-near-me-vermont-…
210228Su-Melbourne’HeraldSun’ Supper Inn
A friend recently asked me for a recommendation on a late-night Chinese restaurant in Melbourne to take a mate visiting from out of town.
For a moment I was stumped. Not because I couldn’t think of a heap of places I loved to go, but because I just used post tense: ‘loved’.
As we emrge from Covid times, a compound effect of contributing factors has, in a very tangible way, shuttered some of our favourite places to eat.
From country town to city street, we’ve always had access to excellent Chinese cuisine, but the fact of the matter is if we don’t show up and support them now, we may lose them forever.
So if you’re in Melbourne and up for a late-night Chinese feast, start with the institution that is Supper Inn, tucked away in one of Melbourne’s dreamily-lit laneways.
Head up the stairs and into a dining room favoured by everyone from excited tourists to well-heeled post-theatre locals and hospitality types in the know.
Bring a group of friends and order up big on luscious steamed oysters with shallots and ginger, pipis tossed in punchy XO and served on a bed of crisp noodles and pair it all with cold beer or hot tea.
Wherever we are in Australia, as our cities spring back to life, we need to ask ourselves what kind of dining landscape we want to find ourselves in.
Covid and its implications have left Asian restaurants vulnerable in an already knife-edge situation, and without giving our support as diners, we may face losing a crucial part of our vibrant food scene.
Level 1 / 15 Celestial Ave, Melbourne, Vic
New Shanghai Melbourne review: xiao long bao soup dumplings will have you begging for more. Dan Stock May 4, 2021
They’re juicy, meaty and lip-scalding hot — you’ll never forget your first xiao long bao, but are these the city’s best?
video: Where Melbourne’s food icons like to eat. This is where you’ll find the best restaurants, cafes and bars in Melbourne and Victoria, according to top chefs Stephanie Alexander, Philippe Mouchel and…
Never mind Diana (in a cafe in Lagos, Portugal), the Twin Towers (walking by a bar in London’s Notting Hill Gate) or Elvis dying on the dunny (oh, but a twinkle in my father’s eye), I’ll never forget where I was when I tasted my first xiao long bao.
The romantic version would have me slurping my first soup dumpling at some smoky Shanghai streetside diner, but it was instead down one of Melbourne’s CBD laneways at a restaurant named after Beijing’s laneways that I first saw GOD (greatest of dumplings).
It was 2010, and the moment of pure revelatory pleasure, of discovering the sleight-of-hand magic of a pork dumpling filled also with its rich, fatty broth, is forever etched in my mind. Never mind the blistered lip from the scalding soup, the splurts on my shirt or the soy splashed on my lap — the art of nibbling a corner to first blow and then sip the soup before downing the dumpling in one took some practise to master — it remains one of my all-time great food memories.
Ka-boom! New Shanghai’s bang bang chicken is an explosion of flavours. Picture: Tony Gough
Hu Tong introduced me and our city to xiao long bao, but it was a few years later at the Emporium’s genre-redefining food court that New Shanghai introduced me to the best.
Beginning in suburban Sydney, New Shanghai has grown into an empire of outposts across the eastern seaboard and the group’s chefs — who are on show at each restaurant’s entry — deftly hand-design more than five million Shanghainese soup dumplings a year.
But those delicate dumplings are now joined by cool cocktails, “Chinese-style” tapas, a large bar area and expansive outdoor dining in the newest addition to the stable, which has taken over the Collins St end of the St Collins Lane food court.
With a beaut balcony overlooking the leafy treetops of Collins St and space for more than 300 diners inside and out, it’s another sure sign of confidence in our CBD returning to busy, bustling life. While it’s still early-days quiet, the multi-zoned space is as welcoming for a few beers and a couple of bites after work as it is a full family banquet, with loads of greenery and comfortable booth seating throughout.
Nothing makes a better beer snack than prawn toast. Picture: Tony Gough.
With more than 200 items of noodles, dumplings and various proteins braised or deep fried, the menu is dauntingly extensive but it’s the “small eat” side of the ledger that differentiates this new addition and affords the flexibility to mix and match a few, or as many, tastes as you like.
Grilled skewers — think Japanese yakitori, but with added Sichuan pepper — are the mainstay of these snacks. Among more than a dozen, there’s lamb sprinkled with cumin salt that’s meaty and more-ish with the right amount of fatty goodness ($9), glisteningly golden nubbins of chicken brushed with prawn paste ($9), whole baby octopus sprinkled with lemon salt that are smoky, sweet and terrifically tender ($12) and deliciously sticky pork belly with Sichuan pepper spice ($9).
A small bowl of bang bang chicken is bang on, the supple slices of poached chicken tossed through a hot, nutty and numbing sauce that’s best mates with a beer ($8.50), while slivers of spicy pork tongue ($8.80) sprinkled with sesame and chives is satisfyingly chewy and lip tinglingly good.
Xiao long bao from New Shanghai. Picture: Instagram
Prawn toast to dip in a luridly purple plum sauce is the type of fried food that makes so much sense after a couple of drinks ($8.80 for four), but so, too, does the flaky cheese and spring onion pancake ($6.50) and crisp pork ribs to gnaw from the bone ($9).
But the standout dish across this table full of plates was the Shanghai smoked fish, where five-spice sprinkled fish is fried and soaked in a sweet soy marinade leaving the flesh tender soft with chewy edges with a hint of smoke, salt and sweet in every chopstick-full ($14.50).
There’s a half dozen beers on tap and a few interesting Chinese brews in the fridge alongside Tsingtao, while a French-leaning wine list has a nice showing of aromatic whites and juicy reds around the $45-a-bottle mark.
Baby octopus skewers. Picture: Tony Gough.
And those XLB? Still as brilliantly delicate and deliciously more-please as ever ($4.50 for three), as are the pan-fried pork buns ($8.50 for three).
As perfect for a post-shopping pit-stop or somewhere to meet for a drink and snack before a show as it is a dining destination in its own right, hidden in plain sight this new New Shanghai is memorable for all the right reasons.
NEW SHANGHAI
Level 2, St Collins Lane 260 Collins St, Melbourne
Mon-Wed 11.30am-3pm; Thurs-Sun from 11.30am-9-10pm
newshanghai.com.au
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www.heraldsun.com.au/lifestyle/food/new-shanghai-melbourn…
* The food doesn’t cover the bad service. Din Tai Fung hands down.
* I remembered New Shanghai in Chaddy upstairs (back in 2017), not because of good food, but for terrible service instead. XLB was of course good, but I also ordered a pork belly stew that is supposedly served in a claypot, but they used a plate instead, and waitress wasn’t even apologetic. Never again.
* Can’t beat Hu Tong
* I Love Dumplings is consistently very good and aptly named.
* Hu Tong is just a bad imitation of Din Tai Fung. And why go there for Aussie Chinese like prawn toast? Says everything about the reviewer, really.
* Din Tai Fung also good but agree, New Shanghai are best in town
Kmart Burwood East: China Bar, Chachago tea to open at Burwood One shopping centre. Kimberley Seedy June 11, 2021 Whitehorse Leader 2 comments
Foodies looking for a midnight treat after visiting Kmart are in for a treat, with a restaurant and popular bubble tea chain coming to Burwood East.
China Bar is opening at Burwood One Shopping Centre.
A popular Asian restaurant and tea chain are set to open at Burwood One Shopping Centre.
Signs have gone up announcing China Bar, the “best Asian eatery” in Melbourne and Chachago, “Taiwan’s most famous milk tea”, are set to open near Subway and Baker’s Delight.
The stores have been empty, after previously being occupied by a pizza restaurant and frozen yoghurt outlet.
The new eateries are set to operate for 24 hours, meaning those visiting Kmart nearby, which also operates around the clock, will be able to drop in after a late night shopping trip.
Chachago is opening at Burwood One Shopping Centre.
China Bar serves “the most popular tastes from Malaysia, Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan” while according to its website Chachago serves a range of tea varieties, including
brown sugar pearl with milk and black tea with ice cream.
China Bar Group marketing and communications manager Karen Lee said both outlets should open in the next couple of months.
“We think (Burwood One) has good levels of foot traffic and there are a lot of students and quite a number of Asian communities there as well,” she said.
Ms Lee said the China Bar Group was also planning to open another Chachago outlet in Jackson Court Doncaster, but was still waiting for materials to arrive from Taiwan before the stores could open.
It is a new bubble tea chain to arrive Australia, with the Doncaster store to be the first Chachago outlet to open in Melbourne.
Ms Lee said they decided to have 24-hour trading at the new outlets, after seeing its success at other China Bars in the city.
“What we observed is a lot of Asian restaurants shut at 10pm and that’s a big gap to fill during the late night, especially in the city stores, you see people start queuing up at 12, after late night partying and things like that.
“So we thought it’s not just Maccas that can do 24 hours.”
Discovery Fusion BBQ Buffet, based at the former Groove Train site at the centre, also reopened its doors at the start of the year.
The former Bank of Melbourne outlet, which recently shut, remains empty.
More Coverage
What to expect at Burwood’s newest restaurant
Popular Asian buffet makes a comeback
www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/east/kmart-burwood-east-china…
