Gourmet Dumpling Restaurant
71 Glenferrie Road, Malvern
Gourmet Dumpling Restaurant (GDR) is my number one dumpling haunt. It has a number of advantages – it’s local, it’s cheap and it’s delicious. They also have an upstairs room where they often sit me when I go with a group of friends so we don’t disturb everyone else. Probably a good idea really.
The restaurant is pretty basic, clean but basic tables and chairs with minty green walls and pictures which seem to be wrapped in shrinkwrap. It’s not flashy, but it’s comfortable and a good place for dinner with a slightly over enthusiastic group of people. Definitely not a great place to take someone for a date though, unless you’re not interested in having another. Funnily enough, this is actually where Gerard and I went for lunch on our third date, luckily there was a fourth date. I put it down to finding someone who likes dumplings as much as I do. I don’t think there’s any other reason why he would have come back for more after that.
This time I visited with a couple friends from work, Wolf and the Passion. We’re all pretty big dumpling fans so obviously we hideously over ordered.
First up we had the chilli oil dumpling in soup (15 pieces – $9). The chilli oil in this isn’t hot at all so if you want some kick you need to add chilli from the little pot on the table.
We followed up with a served of the fried beef dumplings (15 pieces, $9). The skins on these are crispy but not too thick. The filling is a pretty good beef blend too.
Our next dish was the fried chicken and prawn (10 pieces – $9). These are probably my favourite, again the skin is crispy but not too thick and the filling is juicy and in my experience almost always cooked perfectly.
Our final dumpling choice was the steamed shanghai pork mini bun which we affectionately refer to as the creamy pork (9 pieces, $8). These are xiao long bao filled with soup and creamy, creamy pork. Very similar to the quality and consistency at hu tong, but cheap cheap. You’ll generally want to let them cool down a little before you suck out the soupy deliciousness. Watch out for the ones stuck together, it’s a delicate operation to separate them and you don’t want to lose that precious soup.
Just for fun (because we’re always boring and order the same things) we decided to try something new. We broke my cardinal asian restaurant rule of never ordering anything with the word ‘special’ in the name and had the chinese ‘special’ dim sims (4 for $6). We didn’t quite know what to expect but GDR rarely disappoints. The half bite that each of us took out of these before pushing them as far away as possible shows that this time, the gamble did not pay off. At all. They were not great.
The short and the sweet:
GDR is my favourite dumpling place. It’s exactly what you want from a dumpling joint – not too formal, cheap dumplings, big servings and a constant supply of tea, chilli, soy & vinegar.
Price range: Around $15 a head if you’re just eating dumplings, I’ve never spent more than $20.
