Asian persuasion: Sunday Yum Cha

Sunday in the centre of town. I have some ideas for lunch wanting to be one of the first to blog Longrain, the Melbourne spin-off of the oh so hot cocktail and Asian food joint which first opened in Sydney five years ago.
My idea is to trick Jackie into Chinatown and to hit Longrain for a couple of cocktails (few places can match its Asian spin on the Bloody Mary) and enjoy some way hot curries.
It’s working. After a couple of hours or so of Christmas shopping with our nephew Pad, we are hungry. I wonder through Chinatown past the hawkers and the queues of Chinese outside the Empress of China and up towards my goal. Except it’s closed. Bummer.
But luckily Jackie has Yum Cha on her mind.
We mingle in the streets with the crowds dribbling in and out of The Sharks Fin Inn 50-52 Little Bourke St, Melbourne (03 9662 2681). Perhaps fifteen of us crowd the small hallway by the front desk mimicking the lobsters squeezed into the tanks on one wall. Below them are Barramundi. Opposite two sad looking fish float upside down and near priceless abalone do their stuff (stick) on the glass.
One western couple gets a bollocking for not booking – apparently the Sharks Fin does two sittings 11.30 and 1.30.
memes

After perhaps ten minutes we are told we can have a table until 1.30, a bit over an hour away. The waiter places a fridge magnet on our table. At least we didn’t get the bollocking.
My introduction to Yum Cha was in Sydney where bang smack in the city centre there are restaurants the size of football stadiums. Dozens of steaming trolleys patrol the isles.
In the centre of Melbourne (we’re not driving out to Templestowe today) the footprint is many times smaller. But it is buzzing a melting pot of Asia and Australia.
Within a few moments our first tray arrives.
Pad is having problems with his chopsticks. Surprisingly, Jackie also is. A young Chinese woman on a large round table opposite smiles. Jackie’s steamed prawn dumpling slips from between her sticks. And plop slips up the side of the bowl and onto the tablecloth The Chinese woman and I catch each other’s eyes. Soon she is rolling on the floor with laugher and an annoyed male pulls her back up onto her chair.
Jackie is oblivious to all this and for the rest of the meal resorts to stabbing her dumplings. Pad copies her. The rest of the restaurant catch on to what’s happening at our table. I’m the one going bright read yet can actually just about manipulate my sticks when sober.
At least today we have averted the first blog divorce. I left my digital camera and tripod at home (saving my creative energy for supper at one of the top local restaurants on Friday to celebrate our wedding anniversary).
We are starving and I am really shoving these treats down. The staff can barely keep up – Barbeque Pork Pastry, Chicken pastry steamed prawn dumplings, deep-fried prawn and pot stickers.
What finished all of us was a second portion of the barbeque pork pastry. And the fluffy steamed pork buns I insisted that Pad had to try. Or was it the custard egg tart that Jackie insisted on.
We were stuffed, three of us for AUD50, that’s about US$35 or £24. Back soon for round two with the chopsticks.
And now I’ve noticed its Dine& Dish#5 over at The Delicious Life with theme Asian Persuasion. Meanwhile, I’m off to a wine tasting lunch at Longrain on Thursday. And as for Friday our lawyers are on call.