China House

The best laid plans of mice and men, often go awry. Nothing says that more than indecisive restaurant picking and an unsure way of getting to said restaurant. I honestly cannot remember where we wanted to end up this time. I think we went on the 196 bus through the Valley, that goes into New Farm and maybe we wanted to go somewhere around there? As you know, I'm very indecisive at best and this was no exception.

I think I may have been picking at my Boyfriend about how he never picks anywhere for us to eat, asides from that one time at Otsuru and he threw this wild card into the mix. He said there was a good yum cha restaurant upstairs somewhere in China Town that he had gone to with his parents on several occasions. I asked him if it was King of Kings, which is upstairs and near an anime shop, he said he wasn't sure but it was upstairs.

Hina Hous aka China House

We hopped off the bus and lo and behold, it was near King of Kings, its actually right behind it. Small world huh?

We also found this interesting little product in the front of a hair store.

Hair . . . mayonnaise?

I was a bit skeptical when I first walked in, for one they had a massive wine selection, the fish tanks weren't right before the entrance, three of the waiters weren't Chinese and the colours were quite restrained for a Chinese restaurant. At the time, there were four 10+ seatings of families dining so it wasn't too bad, the restaurant was a bit empty when we first got there at around 11am. I heard our waitress remark that it was always a bit slow on that particular weekday.

Wine selection

The bar area. Btw that blurry dude? French.

The back of the room

One of the many fish tanks

I felt much better after we were seated though and they gave us their very, very extensive yum cha menu. It had all the usual classics plus some interesting additions to the menu.

The classy plastic sheet menu

The first thing we got was the steamed vegetables and oyster sauce to get something healthy on our tables. Its been a long time since I've had this dish, my mother makes a lovely version with a thick, super tasty oyster sauce and chips of crunchy, fried garlic garnished on top of it all. This version was just as good, I think it seemed a touch oily and it does look particularly glistening here. The vegetables were steamed perfectly and still had that gloriously bright fluorescent green colour, there could've been more sauce though but it was a perfect way to start our meal. I went after the leaves and my Boyfriend went after the stems, a perfect way to divide the plate!

Glamour shot

The next dish to arrive was the rice noodle and char siu rolls. They were soft but still slightly too thick for my liking, the sauce was good and the char siu wasn't too bad.

Also very shiny

The golden fried calamari is a favourite of his and I can see why. Its literally as the name suggests, a deep fried, golden brown calamari mostly of tentacle pieces with little seasoning beyond that. They were cooked perfectly and still tender on the inside.

These are our Shanghai style pork dumplings, they were very heavily seasoned and I found myself burping up the flavour of these pork dumplings all day. I have no idea what was in them besides a very fine pork mince, the distinct flavour of coriander and that's about it. The skins were paper thin but we still managed to expertly peel them off their steamer. They also came with a red vinegar.

Not xiao long bao ):

We got a serving of black bean chicken feet. The chicken feet I had here are the best I've ever eaten, even more so than my mum's version of chicken feet. They are much redder than in that photo, picture a mouth scalding, fire engine red shade of chicken feet that screams out this is spicy, spicy, spicy! It wasn't that spicy and I suspect food dye, but the garlic chunks were absolutely finger licking delicious, there was a nice chilli burn that I enjoyed a lot. The skin was beautifully soft and fatty. On the other hand, the feet themselves were a bit on the small side, though with five in that serve in total.

Oh man these were good

The har gao were solid, a minced prawn filling that was tasty but not the best I've ever had.

Solid har gao

This was the mixed seafood dumpling with XO sauce, I had no idea what seafood was in this and no idea where the XO sauce came into play but it was a delicious, tasty dumpling and I would've cheerfully had the entire serve by myself. I really liked the thinness of this dumpling skin, it was amazing.

Omg so good

These were the crab meat dumplings. They were minced with a few other bits and bobs so you didn't get that distinctive delicate crab flesh feel to them. They tasted like a deep fried won ton that had been steamed in a very flavoursome soup/sauce, and while I normally abhor mixing crunchy stuff and wet stuff, this was a very tasty mix. The edges were still crunchy and the rest of the skin was chewy having softened in the soupy sauce. I really liked this and would happily order this again.

Super delicious. I ate these all and didn't offer him any

Lastly, he ordered mango pancakes, a thin yellow crepe wrapped around canned mango slices and sweetened cream. Just as fatty as it sounds and tasty too.

Fat little bundles

Mostly aerated cream ahaha

China House Seafood Restaurant:
Atmosphere: 7, a quiet little restaurant on the day we went. Low key for a Chinese restaurant.
Service: 10, absolutely fantastic. They were super attentive, never lost a single order, joked around with us, asked if we wanted dessert, offered drinks and were generally amazing.
Food: 9, the best yum cha I've had.