Fang Dumpling House, Cremorne

Fang Dumpling House is a Chinese dumpling restaurant just off Military Road in Cremorne. You'll find a wonderful array of house-made dumplings, some made to order. There's indoor and outdoor seating and friendly service too.

"Just order a lot of dumplings," Sammie says. I'm at Fang Dumpling House with Sammie, David and Mr NQN. I am holding a picture menu as well as a paper menu where you tick off your choices. It's worth flicking through the picture menu as it helps you decide what to order as every item has a photo and many dumplings sound similar on paper. Fang Dumpling House opened around 3 years ago and Sammie found it through her local facebook group. We had to try it as it was an outdoor restaurant so a good place to take the two Teddys, a visit made more urgent as winter approached. While there are a couple of outdoor heaters we are seated underneath the marquee away from them so rug up if you want to sit outside.

Inside the restaurant there's a gentleman behind the glass partition busy making dumplings this evening. There are 15 varieties of dumpling on offer but there are also Chinese restaurant classics like sweet and sour pork and honey king prawns. We stick to mostly dumplings as per requests and they come in lots of 4 or 6. The two Teddys get excited when the food arrives shortly later although they will have to be happy with the chicken snacks instead.

Oh what a spectacular start to our meal. And by spectacular I bite the top "nipple" off the top of the bun and then take a bite. Some hot soup squirts up my nose and after wiping this off I add some chilli oil, take a bite and then choke on the chilli oil spluttering and coughing and trying to spit out, "NOT COVID!!!". After all of that they're good, they're great even even when I approached the dumpling again long after my coughing fit.

Har Gow are ubiquitous at yum cha but these are one of my favourite dumplings of the night. The prawns have a wonderfully fresh, spring texture to them and they're seasoned well so you don't need anything, just the plain unadultered prawn dumpling (because after a chilli oil coughing fit I was steering away from chilli).

I love it when siu mai has prawns in it because it gives them such an appealing, bouncy texture along with kernels of juicy corn. These are fat siu mai and are satisfyingly tasty.

The Xiao long baos are good, again the filling is quite nice and the skins thin and none of the skins burst when we picked them up so that we got plenty of soup with each XLB. These are Mr NQN's favourite dumpling of the night.

We also tried some of the steamed chicken dumplings, six prettily pleated dumplings stuffed to the brim with pork and garlic chive mince filling.

We ordered two types of pan fried dumplings and the first we try are the pan fried pork and garlic chive dumplings with a crispy bottom and a delicious filling. All of the fillings we tried were quite different to each other and well seasoned and don't need any adornment.

The other fried dumplings was a recommendation from our waitress and I'm glad that we ordered these because they're my favourite dumpling of the night. With a crispy bottom and filled with prawns this is satisfying in both taste and crispy texture.

We all really enjoy the wontons in chilli sauce, especially David as these are his favourite. It's more a soy based sauce than a very spicy chilli sauce but the wontons are plentiful and tasty.

To break up the dumpling fest we also had a few other dishes. The noodles are very tasty and are hand made so that each strand is slightly different. There's a good amount of shredded pork and some vegetables and it's nice to have something different texturally with the dumplings.

We were also recommended the stir fried green beans with minced pork. These beans have the perfect texture to them - the perfect bite as they aren't too soft or too hard and are slightly wrinkled.

The only thing that we ordered that we didn't finish was the mapo tofu. I actually really enjoyed it but Sammie doesn't like tofu and Mr NQN and David weren't fans of it.

So tell me Dear Reader, do you find picture menus helpful? Have you ever had a coughing fit and had to explain that it wasn't COVID?

This meal was independently paid for.

Fang Dumpling House

Shop 8-10/332 Military Rd, Cremorne NSW 2009

Hours: Wednesday 5-9:30pm

Thursday to Monday 11:30am–9:30pm

Closed Tuesday

https://fangdumplinghouse.com.au/order-now#dumpling-buns