Tag / chinatown
I thought of Supper Inn just as I was reading Lainie’s latest post on Shanghai Dumpling, both are bargain basement old fashion Chinese restaurants (as in oversea Chinese restaurant) in Chinatown at Melbourne CBD.
As I am heading to Melbourne again in some two weeks time, I suppose it is wise to post the remaining food entries from the city before my second trip. The Melbourne food map is slowly shaping up. *beams*
Supper Inn is located at a dodgy alley by the name of Celestial Ave
Supper Inn is located right in the middle of Chinatown, a little alley by the name of Celestial Avenue (can’t get a more Chinese name than that) just off Little Burke Street. The restaurant operates from 5:30pm till 2:30am daily, hence it is one of the only places to eat in CBD after midnight.
The dining area is located on first floor, with really old school interior deco and even older waiters. The place is, however, air conditioned and generally quite clean. Business seemed to be brisk even though it was past midnight in midweek when Pinky, Mellissa and I went there last April.
Chinese tea, yau char kuai, century egg congee
The menu at Supper Inn isn’t exactly very extensive for a Chinese restaurant, but you do get to choose from over a dozen types of soup and porridge, a few appetizers, and entrees. From duck and mushroom soup, sharks fin soup, the venerable hot and sour soup, and more exotic items like duck’s tongue, abalone porridge, and coagulated pork’s blood porridge, they do have most of the essentials.
coagulated pork blood porridge, minced chicken with sweet corn soup
I knew what I had to order the moment I looked at the menu, the coagulated pork blood porridge ($6.50)! Mell had the minced chicken with sweet corn soup ($6.00) while Pinky ordered the century egg porridge ($6.50). We also shared a pretty large serving of yau char kuai ($6.00) to share.
KY, Mell, and Pinky at Supper Inn
The porridge were very good, cooked to the point where individual grain is indistinguishable like how Cantonese porridge should be. And of course, coagulated pork blood never disappoint, it is something that is not easy to find even in KL (I usually get my fix from lorong seratus 100, ss2), and I wouldn’t have thought I’d get them in Melbourne, bliss!
Sweet corn soup was pretty good too, but the yau char kuai (some might call it Chinese donut..) was a bit of a let down by being soft and slightly oily though still edible. However, Pinky said that this is an exception rather than rule, they are usually crispy and tasty, I guess I’ll just have to take her words for it.
Supper Inn is located right in the middle of Chinatown
Bill came to about $25 for the three of us. Chinese tea, as with ice/warm water in other restaurants, are usually free in Melbourne. So if you are craving for some chewing optional supper in Melbourne, this is the place to go.
Address:
Supper Inn Chinese Restaurant
15 Celestial Ave,
Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia
GPS: -37.811873, 144.968091
Tel: +603 9663 4759
On the first day at Melbourne, Mell and I met up with Margaret and Kerol. Margaret is a dear friend who came to Melbourne more than two years ago to study and was last seen on this blog on the pudu Mongolian Steamboat place we went for her farewell.
It has been over a year since we met in KL, I think I still had a different (and some said very tragic) hairstyle then.
KY, Mell, Kerol, and Margaret at Red Silks, Chinatown @ Melbourne
Chinatown at Melbourne is located at Little Bourke Street from the intersection of Swanston (the busiest street) to around the intersection with Exhibition or Spring Street. Red Silks is technically not really in Chinatown anymore as it is located in a little mall at Bourke Street half a block away.
The closest tram stop to the place would be Swanston/Bourke.
braised preserved vegetable with pork belly, eggplant, clay pot tofu with seafood
The restaurant offers quite a wide variety of Chinese foods; from noodles to single serving vegetable-on-rice to the more common “tai chau” style dishes, they have it all. As a licensed bar, they do serve beer & wine too.
For lunch, we ordered 3 dishes to go with steamed rice for the four of us.
lemon honey tea & iced milk tea, glorious fatty pork belly
I of course, ordered the braised preserved vegetable with pork belly (mui choi kao yok). While slightly too salty to be eaten alone, the dish goes very well with steamed rice with its fatty pork belly. If only they had chili padi..
The eggplant with minced pork was quite a strong tasting dish that goes well with steamed rice, I do find it a bit too heavy after a while though.
The clay pot tofu with seafood came with good size prawns, cuttle fish, scallops, crab sticks, green peas, and a generous portion of Japanese tofu in classy yummy gravy. This dish was as good as I’ve had from anywhere else.
Bullens Lane is at the heart of Chinatown
The portions were quite large and we actually did not manage to finish all three dishes. The bill came to about A$17 per person, still rather affordable in Melbourne standard. Other dishes in their lunch specials menu goes from $8 to $10.5 and like most other places around here, water is free.
Address:
Red Silk Restaurant and Bar
101, 1st Floor
200 Bourke Street
Melbourne
GPS: -37.81284,144.967357
Tel: +613-9663 9922
Mell and I just had Vietnamese pho at Mekong a couple blocks away (will blog about the place and other restaurants for sure) at Swanston street, and I decided to process pictures taken in the last two days and share some of them here.
Melbourne City night view, taken from Franklin/Swanston
I stay at the Verve apartment with Mell. The building is located at the corner of Swanston and Franklin, the edge of the busiest part of the city. At 20 odd floors, you get to see pretty much the whole city. It is rather magnificient, especially at night.
The city is very well planned, roads are relatively wide with very pedestrian friendly side walks that are, at places, wider than the roads for automobiles. Walking is pretty much the main mode of transportation here, every intersection is equipped with pedestrian traffic lights that not only blinks, but beeps too (for the blind). Very handy.
a typical Melbourne city tram
Crisscrossing the city are the electric trams. You can get on the tram for $3.70 (valid for 2 hours). Most of the trams stops at the middle of the road, unless it is a one-way street, like the one on the photo above. The trams are pretty much like the LRT without the elevated tracks, and running on a much slower pace.
State Library of Victoria
Architecture of the city is a mixture of old and new. You have the State Library of Victoria on Swanston that was opened way back in 1854 sitting right next to the QV Village that was opened in 2003.
Queen Victoria Village – QV
There are also dedicated cycling lanes in most roads, I guess cycling works best during this time of the year when temperature hovers around the low twenties and mid teens.
the ceiling of Melbourne Central
To travel to the suburbs or further, the train stops at Melbourne Central, which is doubles as one of the larger shopping complexes in the city. There’s cinema, restaurants, shops, and an office tower. Interestingly, the Melbourne Central railway station used to be called Museum.
a mini cooper at the intersection
While cars are a lot more affordable, it is quite a bitch to find parking spaces in the city without breaking your bank. Since public transportation is very good in the city anyway, there is virtually no traffic jam in the city.
a restaurant by Lygon Street
The city is pretty much overrun by Asian. I did not see any whites at all on the first night. The sidewalk of Swanston street (the busiest street in Melbourne) is basically 80% Chinese.
Lygon Street, however, looks more like the Australia I expected. We had lunch with Pinky and Kit and actually were the minority. The place is littered with many Italian restaurants, and appropriately referred to as Little Italy of Melbourne.
Chinatown in Melbourne
Little Bourke Street is a little one-way road that is the whole Chinatown of Melbourne, which, incidentally, is also the oldest Chinatown in Australia. Like most Chinatown in the world, there are plenty of Chinese restaurants everywhere. We had lunch at a restaurant called Red Silk on Sunday and it was actually rather delicious.
I’ll attempt to create a food map for this city (as much as I can anyway), so watch this space!
