Shanghai Night, Ashfield
Food bloggers always rave about Shanghai Night. So after I tried Chinese Fast Food (another Shanghai restaurant), I was eager to try its competitor down the road.
When I walked in the door, I was immediately disappointed. I wasn’t expecting fancy but the floors were very dirty, chairs were haphazardly strewn around tables and there were only two waitresses servicing ten tables.
Menu sample page
We had to wait a while before a waitress was free to take our order. She kept rushing around, distributing the dishes coming out of the kitchen before she finally had a moment to jot down our orders.
After placing our order, it was ages before our first dish. We sat, twiddling our thumbs, waiting, waiting, waiting.
Finally, the first dish to come out was:
I wasn’t a fan of these. The reason? I took one bite, and these blood red juices came out. I looked at the others eating their dumplings and there were no blood red juices. I could only conclude that I had the misfortune to eat a rare one.
The dumplings were quickly followed by the next dish, the famous xiao long baos.
These were quite good, but I would have preferred them without the large pieces of whole ginger that I bit into.
After these two dishes, it was a long, long wait until the rest of our meal arrived. We looked enviously at other diners, and got excited when dishes left the kitchen, only to skip by our table. We stared at the specials on the wall. We watched life go by.
FINALLY, the rest of our dishes arrived.
These weren’t the best that I’ve had. The dough was a bit too sour for my liking, and the filling was quite skimpy.
I didn’t like these. The bottom was overcooked, to the point where it was hard to bite through the outside. Also, there was no soup inside the filling like there was at Chinese Fast Food! 🙁
You can’t really fault the prices here. They are about a dollar or two cheaper than Chinese Fast Food. But as a matter of taste, I prefer Chinese Fast Food which is just a few doors down.
Service is also lacking here, it took ages for us to order, to receive the food (this isn’t really a fault I suppose, if the food is taking time to cook), to get tea refills and the place was understaffed during a busy lunchtime.
I probably wouldn’t return, but I am eager to try New Shanghai which is just next door!
