Acclaimed Melbourne restaurant Lee Ho Fook has just opened in Sydney and the menu is full of creative Chinese dishes and plays on classics like their signature crispy eggplant along with Peking duck and caviar. Find out more about Lee Ho Fook in Sydney.
Its a Friday night when Mr NQN and I make our way to Lee Ho Fook. The restaurant is lcoated on the first floor of the Porter House Hotel where the restaurant Dixon's and Sons used to be. The restaurant opened just under a month ago under Chef Victor Liong and it is buzzing this Friday night. We step out of the lift and into the restaurant with moody lighting and red accents.
The restaurant has been in planning since late last year. Victor explains, "I had a look at the site on Boxing Day and immediately with the exposed brick and federation heritage style frontage felt like Lee Ho Fook in Melbourne. The building shares a similar build time of the early 19th century and both being industrial in heritage - I also wanted the restaurant to be tucked away like in Melbourne."
The restaurant is the drawcard in the Trippas White Group dining precinct. Victor and his key chefs like Executive Chef Brad Guest and Head Chef Laxman Argeja will regularly travel between the two locations. At the moment there aren't any Sydney exclusive dishes but that is set to change in a few weeks once they've settled into their new home. "Both cities have distinctive energies, Melbourne has a demure indoor culture with the arts and our hospitality landscape very much reflects that, Sydney with its warmer weather and how the city is laid out enjoys a faster tempo and outdoor centric energy - both exciting and both distinctive," says Victor.
The drinks menu is extensive but Mr NQN has the wine matching ($100) while I like the look of the tea matching ($50) as I don't drink as much. The cocktails feature Chinese flavours like Lan Guo Ma and Moutai.
We start with a range of snacks recommended by our attentive and friendly waitress. As we were waiting for these, the table next to us received their Peking Duck order and the smell was driving me wild. We get a bite sized preview of it with the Peking duck snack which has the crispy skinned duck on a round of soft white bread with Frosista Kaluga Caviar. Who knew that Peking duck and caviar would be such a satisfying match?
I am loving the revival of prawn toast at Chinese restaurants as chefs upgrade the humble prawn toast. Case in point is this one made with paradise prawns, green garlic and a lobe of Tasmanian sea urchin on top, designed as a riff off the flavours of garlic prawns. It is served with a with a pot of salted egg yolk browned butter mousse.
The pickled Spring Bay mussels are a great snack as they're paired with chilli, fennel and nasturtium vinegar in a punchy, bright mouthful. The black mussels are a good small size so that they are very tender.
The Kashgari spiced tuna is inspired by the Silk Road with slices of yellowfin tuna treated like red meat. The sashimi is seared on the outside sitting on a bed of garlic eggplant, pinenuts and aged black vinegar with a touch of cumin. You can really taste the Central Asian inspiration with the cumin scented eggplant.
A must order is their signature dish of crispy eggplant inspired by a Sichuan dish called "fish fragrant eggplant". It comes as 6 slender batons of super crispy eggplant doused with sweet, spiced red vinegar. The crispy texture is addictive in every bite and the batons remains resoundingly crispy. At the end there is a little numbing from the Sichuan peppercorns.
Another dish that Lee Ho Fook are known for is the Peking duck. If you look at the fridges near the bar, you'll see a fridge full of ducks hanging. These cornfed duck from Victoria are dry aged for 10 days and then maltose glazed, slow roasted and served with steamed pancakes, quince hoisin, spring onion, cucumber, coriander and pickled daikon. A lot of people order this as soon as they sit down because it takes 35 minutes as each duck is cooked to order (you can order half or a whole duck). Here they serve the duck breast with some meat on it but the skin is lovely and crisp thanks to the maltose glaze. It's delicious and half a duck is plenty for two people, even three people. The quince hoi sin while delicious isn't very different from regular hoi sin.
It was a toss up between this and the Kung Pao Skull Island Prawns but we love pippies. These are served with a gutsy XO sauce on a bed of soft rolled rice noodles with crispy Chinese doughnuts on top. The pippies are fantastic with a generous amount of XO sauce so that every pippi has plenty of flavour and the rice noodles soak up that XO sauce. The crispy you tiou donuts provide a nice crunch and even stay crunchy when dunked into the XO sauce. Victor explains, "I've always felt the rice noodles worked especially well with the firmness of the meaty clams and the sauce, a different less obvious combination."
There are two types of fried rice, a regular one and a Fujian style fried rice. Fujian fried rice is a mix of fried rice and sauce - this at first appears like an egg drop soup but under it hides a layer of fried rice with scallops and blue swimmer crab meat that is so moreish and pleasurable to eat. "We looked into the cuisine of Fujian region in coastal southern China for all the elements that make up this dish - all fresh and dried seafood that represent that region's light and seafood umami flavours - xo sauce (dried scallop and prawns) in the fried rice, fresh blue swimmer crab and scallops in the sauce, topped with fried dried prawn floss," says Victor.
There are 3 vegetable side dishes: chips, vegetables and wombok cabbage and our waitress recommends the wombok to go with the pippies and fried rice. The hot sesame dressing is a perfect match for the crisp wombok and there's also some chopped dried chilies as well and I really enjoy the texture of the wombok with the wasabi heat of the dressing, inspired by Victor's last trip to Beijing.
For a classic refreshing tropical dessert, the mango pudding sorbet has passionfruit granita made with sparkling water to lighten it further, pomelo segments, lime zest and nitro frozen coconut cream with a smooth as silk mango sorbet.
However whatever you do, you have to order the jasmine rice ice cream inspired by a hot fudge sundae. The jasmine rice is infused into milk and cream and the starch helps form the custard. On the base is red bean and chestnuts (that Victor calls a Chinese mont Blanc) and warm cocoa caramel with plenty of crunchy cocoa nibs whose natural bitterness offsets the caramel while keeping a strong chocolate flavour. It's sweet and salty and it's so well nuanced with brown butter to enrich it. Victor explains, "Every time I try and take it off there's a mutiny - it's also my wife's favourite dessert we do."
So tell me Dear Reader, have you been to the Lee Ho Fook in Melbourne or Sydney? Have you ever tried a tea pairing or a non wine pairing?
NQN and Mr NQN were guests of Lee Ho Fook but all opinions remain her own.
Lee Ho Fook
Level 1/203 Castlereagh St, Sydney NSW 2000
Phone: 1300 224 150
Dinner Monday to Saturday from 5:30pm
Lunch from 12pm Wednesday to Saturday
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