Thursday, July 21, 2016

Wonton House, Melbourne CBD by Bureaucrat

Not only does the Entertainment Book has dining offers for upmarket restaurants (e.g., Cafe Florentine in Brighton and Gramercy Bistro in Prahran), it also has heaps of dining offers for your day-to-day sort of restaurants and cafes.  The Lawyer and I had just enough time to squeeze in a quick dinner before a concert at the Arts Centre, and we figured we'd give Wonton House a try.  With a "buy one get one free" deal on offer, this would be a quick and cheap meal!  (Click on these links to find out how we're raising money for FareShare by asking our Aussie readers to buy a copy of the 2016-17 Entertainment Book).

While the menu has lots of wontons and noodles and rice dishes, we were limited to just ordering the signature dish - wonton noodles ($10.80), which was fine by us as we were keen to try this dish.  Wonton House proclaim that they make their wontons fresh each day.

I'm always a bit skeptical of how good wontons and dumplings are at renowned wonton/dumpling houses. They always seem to disappoint.  For me, the biggest no-no's are the use of MSG and non quality fillings.

Wonton House, wonton, noodles
Pleasingly, Wonton House's wontons are pretty good.  Big and plump, they're filled with (surprisingly) lots of prawn and pork.  I'd say it has more prawn in them than most places.  While the soup was a tad salty, the wontons themselves were nicely seasoned and I didn't get that icky coating of MSG on my tongue.  They were served with a reasonable amount of egg noodles and tender choi sum.

Wonton House, pan fried dumplings
We also got a serve of pan fried dumplings as a side dish.  These, too, were pretty good.  A nice crisp crust, and the filling was porky and had lots of fresh ginger and spring onions.

Verdict

We really liked it
We really liked it.

Overall

Wonton House turned out better than expected.  The food is fresh and the ingredients are of a pretty good quality.  I'd definitely keep in mind next time I've got a hankering for wontons, and I'd definitely order the pan fried dumplings again.

Service was friendly but the only complaint we had was that they obviously wrote our order incorrectly - we had to chase them up for the second bowl of wonton noodles.

If Wonton House doesn't take your fancy, you can check out Nam Loong, a favourite of Big Fil's, which is only a few doors down.

Find it at

Wonton House
181 Russell Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Phone: (03) 9662 9882

Wonton House Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato 

9 comments:

  1. Your post reminded how much I like the prawn & pork wontons, so I just had them for lunch. I ordered wonton without noodles, and asked for extra wonton. Delish! I used to eat the same wontons at Super Bowl in Sydney.

    Wonton House used to have the best congee in Melbourne, but sadly they've gone downhill in the congee department. My last experience there was a fish congee with little micro-specks of fish, rather than the normal meaty chunks, and the congee was too thick. I had the impression that the place might have been taken over by northerners who know nothing about congee, but I'm only guessing.

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    1. Mm. Double wontons w no noodles sound very good. But I'm wary of ordering congee at any restaurant... Ive heard horror stories of how they are made!
      Bureaucrat

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  2. I've heard of plenty of disease outbreaks caused by salads, but I've never heard of a disease spread by congee. To play it safe, I'll continue to eat congee and avoid salad.

    Anyway, do tell us some of the horror stories. I've always assumed that the leftover rice from a meal will be used for congee, but does it get worse than that? It can't be worse than what happens with sausages, and I happily eat those.

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  3. It's not the fact that they use leftover rice to make congee (afterall, that's the proper way to make congee)... it's a question of how old the leftover rice is.

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  4. Wonton tong mein at Fancy Oriental is pretty good. The wontons remind me of HK.

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  5. Hi Anon, I haven't heard of Fancy Oriental... which part of town is it?

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  6. Box Hill, station St, near the Booth

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  7. Sorry for late post!

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  8. No worries Anon :) I gotta keep my eye out for it next time I'm in Box Hill.

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