Dumpling Delight
Cuisine: Dumplings, Nothwestern Chinese
Address: 20 Wharf St, Tauranga
Phone: 07 5712166
Drinks: Beer, soft drinks - some unusual
Reservations: Probably unnecessary
I do like this place. They are so sweet and friendly that the occasional chaos or the downhome need to collect your own plates and cutlery doesn't really matter. And the food is good. This is a brief rave because I tried a new dish and it blew me away!
We just popped in for some quick dumplings and I took the chance to try something I've been eyeing up since the first time we went to Dumpling Delight. Their Big Bowl of Fish. If you've been there - or up Devonport Road to Sichuan Style - you might have noticed really large deep bowls coming out from time to time. Most regularly these are beef or fish in chilli oil (Sichuan Style rather poetically calls it "...in thick spicy tongue-numbing sauce"). We've had the beef one here (rather wonderful) but never the fish. Till now.
- Pork Delicacy dumplings, pan-fried $13.80 / 16 pce
- Lemon Chicken $22
- Fish Filets in Hot Chilli Oil $24
- Steamed rice $2.50 each
And all I can say is WOW! It's a HUGE bowl, filled with hot-pot sauce from which you scoop out the fish fillets, bean sprouts, cabbage and bok choi. The sauce itself was deep and rich and redolent of chilli and beans and Sichuan pepper and all sorts of intense Northern/Western Chinese flavours, a strong underlying sweetness mitigating against the sea of chilli. And for all that it's not too hot (we went medium) since you're not really eating the soupy oily sauce itself, just the stuff in it.
Even more impressive was the amount of fish, thin fillets with a unique slippery velvety texture, and just masses of it. Three of us each had plenty. And bean sprouts are lovely lightly cooked like that. If you like a blast of something unusual and haven't tried this one I'd say definitely give it a go. Great dish, great price.
The dumplings were as good as usual and are a helluva reasonable deal for 16 of them. They're handmade and are particularly juicy. And having them fried on the bottom adds a great textural edge. The chicken was just fine too, not too sweet, crisp, moist. But this was all about that fish. That big beautiful bowl of fish... Yum!
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