East Ocean Restaurant
421-429 Sussex St
Chinatown, Sydney
Yum Cha - two little words that instantly get our mouths watering. Even though there are plenty of places around to grab this delicious lunch time food, Chinatown is still the hub for it. East Ocean Restaurant has been around for ages and is certainly one of the most popular too. We started with - steamed dumplings. This probably isn’t unusual as most people start out with these. Our first selection was the prawn and garlic chive variety. These are one of our favourites. Any dumpling with prawns in it is off to a good start. These were plump and tasty - especially dipped in the ever-present garlic chilli sauce.
We were surprised to see Peking duck pancakes come around. Yes they are at a lot of places - but not all of them. It was a pleasant surprise though and we eagerly grabbed them. They were great and certainly had plenty of duck meat in them too.
It can’t all be steamed dishes can it? We had this crispy squid that was hot and golden and very hard to resist. Crispy squid is another go-to dish of ours at almost any yum cha session.
Back to the dumplings again! This time it was prawn dumplings and scallop and chive dumplings. Seafood is always a winner inside this delicate steamed pastry. We also can’t resist devouring oodles of garlic chilli sauce. They even brought a bigger dish of it for us!
Steamed BBQ pork buns are always available. These fluffy pillows filled with sweet pork are wonderful. We also had some fried prawn rice noodle rolls covered in sesame seeds. The nutty seeds went really well with the sweet prawn meat. Yes please - any time!
Finally dessert. Are you a custard tart person or a mango pancake person? We generally compromise and have both. This time it was just the pancakes though. These bright sweet doughy pancakes are filled with mango cheeks and fresh sweetened cream. It’s a winning combination every time.
We left East Ocean Restaurant full and satisfied. It’s easy to see why it has been so popular for so long.