PPP: Bamboo Basket

Lu., was back in town for one night and one night only! No additional shows available, cash in your tickets while you still can! Lu., always hits the town like a natural disaster, shows up out of the blue, tries to organise a get together and leaves before you realise what has happened. This time I managed to catch her! We headed out to dinner with Gill., Lu., my Boyfriend and I.

Bamboo Basket was picked seeing as it was a firm favourite of Gill and Lu.,s and I agreed since I've never been there. Something about the prices always throws me off . . .check out their menu to see what I'm talking about! What startles me the most is that they have a constant public holiday price besides their regular price, how often are these guys open?

Yeah this place!

I love a place with help yourself condiments, no matter how fancy it is. It has the usual cohort of soy sauce, chilli sauce and black vinegar. Perfect for sprucing up your meal!

Helpfully labelled

I was having a major month of inability to recognise food so when this came to the table I cheerfully dug in thinking it was what I ordered. Nope, it was what Lu., ordered pork wontons with spicy garlic vinegar sauce. These were delicious! Sweet, salty and slightly gingery, they had almost scary softness that just cooked pork has. They were slippery little suckers though and there were a few splashes where we struggled to pick them up. Although a little hard to share out with the four of us, we made it work.

Tasty!

Gill., loves their cumin lamb. I don't, mostly because I hate the taste and smell of cumin. It is the celery of the spice world, once it gets in something, you can't help but notice it. The lamb was crazy tender with none of that fattiness you normally expect of lamb. The capsicum and onion were cooked until sweet but still crunchy. It would've been a great dish except the cumin chased me off!

Bleh cumin

Gill., also ordered the steamed barbeque pork buns, super soft, white and fluffy buns with a mild sweetness to them. The barbeque pork was small pieces once you tore off the warm exterior. It was flavoursome and dyed a bright red, although a touch sweet. Very good if you're a fan of barbeque pork buns.

Fluffy little clouds

Lu., ordered their specialty of steamed pork soup dumplings! Not quite as pretty as the ones from New Shanghai with much less pleats, but still cute! I found these to be quite good, with a splash of soup on the inside. Half the fun as usual was trying to excise the dumping without losing any of the soup. Lu., was fascinated by them and thought them to be very tasty.

Mmm soup dumplings

My Boyfriend ignored all the food in favour of his roasted duck noodle soup and you can see why. Honestly, the best duck I've had in a very, very long time with perfectly deep brown crisp skin, moist flesh and deep salty, lip smacking, flavour to the bone. I kept eating his duck and passing it off to Lu., and Gill., to try whenever I could. I gave him puppy dog eyes to have the last piece when he sat back after nearly finishing his soup and duck. He reluctantly gave me the last piece after gallantly declaring it was only because he loved me.

Omg dat duck

The noodle soup was okay as well and served separately! It just makes it so much neater when the fried main is served separately, it ensures that the food doesn't get soggy! It also makes it much easier to share too. There were big halves of shimeji mushrooms, kai lan and fresh thick rice noodles like udon, the noodles had that fresh flavour were they are still amazing chewy and springy texture. The soup wasn't bad either but not great either, with a good saltiness and no oily finish.

Tasty rice noodles

I had a hankering for my own plate of noodles so I ordered these handmade cold noodles with peanut sauce, shredded chicken, onion and coriander. The noodles were absolutely delicious but I would have been happy with a lot more of that peanut sauce, I love the stuff! The shredded chicken tasted a lot like Vietnamese goi ga does, that lightly dressed with sugar and lime cabbage salad with poached/boiled chicken shreds. Its a really tasty and light tasting combination with the creaminess of the peanut sauce making it that little bit naughty so you remain happy.

I loves peanuts

This is actually the dish I ordered! How on earth did I mistake it for Lu.,'s!? Shangdong style pork dumplings, I'm not sure why they come with this super thin crust of pastry but it was pretty tasty! Crunchy easy to snap off, they hid six pork dumplings beneath it. When I googled Shangdong dumplings none of them looked anything like each other but none of them looked like this either! I didn't find anything particularly different about these pork dumplings compared to the pork wonton ones from earlier to be honest. I may have been too busy slurping up noodles and stealing duck pieces to really comment.

Why do you look like that? TSG you can't just ask why something looks like that

The last dish I ordered was salt and pepper calamari, crispy, tender tentacles with a mildly salty exterior. It was freshened up a little bit with green onion chunks.

Alright, would not reorder

Bamboo Basket
Atmosphere: 7, busy little place with a modern sort of take on Asian restaurants.
Service: 5, pretty average. We got our food but it was hard to get a waiter to notice us or remove plates.
Food: 8, really delicious. I would go back here again for a meal if I was feeling cashed up.