Haoke Seafood Restaurant

N., demanded that we go to yum cha one day, she was feeling a bit homesick and sick of European style breakfasts. Unfortunately Brisbane doesn't have many early morning yum cha places, we only have lunch time or late night yum cha so off we went for lunch! We had actually tried going to another location before this that I won't disclose. We arrived there at the exact time that the venue was stated to open, waited half an hour, in which time no staff or customers arrived. So we decided to high tail it to Haoke instead!

We pretty much just tried the classics that everyone orders at yum cha. So first off we have har gow! Your standard prawn dumplings, these were large plump whole prawn dumplings with a thin, finely pleated skin. A standard dumpling done well, onwards!

Ol' faithful

Siu mai dumplings with a small cube of carrot at the top to visually imitate the crab roe you can get on siu mai in fancier places. Also nothing flash, I think we ignored this dumpling after we each grabbed one.

Back up~

Chicken feet! This was much better than the one I've had at Landmark, the colour is much darker, the garlic much more potent and the flavour had soaked in a lot more into the silky chicken skin. I like that they serve it in even numbers, otherwise as Mama Pham says, how will the chicken walk?

Mama Pham always makes that joke

This is a prawn and garlic chive dumpling, its not all that different from the har gao dumpling really, there a bit of additional freshness and garlic punch from the inclusion of the chives.

The tend to be a bit bigger than har gao too

N., ordered this for us since she said it was really good. We got some deep fried tofu puffs covered in fish paste with mushrooms on top of that. The serving lady helpfully cut everything in half for us. I think due to the cooking method, the mushrooms had the least exposure to heat and were still very firm/fresh tasting. You know that uncooked flavour that you can get with mushrooms, I find it an odd taste and can't eat mushrooms that way.

I just ate the fish paste

These were a deep fried thingy with barbecue pork on the inside. I have no idea what this stuff is, its white, slightly sweet, super chewy and even after being fried its quite pale. I have this weird feeling it might be made out of rice flour? Who knows.

?_? whats the English name for it?

Lacklustre barbecue duck, shiny skin that wasn't salted enough. We packed this up for lunch with the noodles below, we barely ate any of it.

I love noodles but I did not love these soy sauce fried noodles. They were literally just soy sauce, some onion and egg noodles but they left a very greasy puddle of oil when you lifted them up.

Pass

I love salt and pepper calamari like I can't even describe. These were quite good, no chewiness, a light batter, a good saltiness and a large serving to boot.

Noice

Xiao long bao! These looked almost suspiciously perfect, all the pleats look completely the same don't they? We got a good blast of some red vinegar to go with these but I still prefer the ones you can get at New Shanghai.

Perfectly pleated

Haoke Seafood Restaurant
Atmosphere: 5, your classic Chinese restaurant done up in red and gold.
Service: 5, your standard subpar service. 
Food: 7, definitely better than Landmark and its open for late night yum cha. Unfortunately the parking situation is a lot more dismal. Pick your poison I guess?