Oriental teahouse has always been serving up delicious Chinese food but now they also have a fun game to play while you eat. ‘Dumplings for dating’ is a game you can request where they give you a paper placemat which doubles as a 4-part board game that leads you through a series of questions with your date while ordering dumplings and dishes for each other. It’s a great conversation starter and a good get to know you game. It starts at ice-breakers, moves into foreplay, then into deep and meaningfuls and finishes of course, with a happy ending.
We started with cocktails where we had to choose a cocktail for each other. Luckily my date knows I love tea, so I had the apple Sencha martini, the pink panther was good too with vodka, soho (lychee), grapefruit and lemon.
The ginger prawn dumplings are a classic and when done well they are delicious. They were steamed and full of flavour with that ginger sauce over the top. Love.
The rice paper prawns were deep-fried and wrapped with a ribbon of seaweed which was cute and served with Japanese mayo to dip.
My fave was the shredded steak. The small strips of beef are cooked in a sticky sweet chilli sauce and served with string beans and sesame seeds. That sticky sweet sauce with the beef is next level.
The salt and pepper calamari was lightly battered and fried, then dusted in garlic salt with some thin slices of chilli. They were cooked perfectly and melt in your mouth. It was served with wonton crisps for crunch.
The ‘Legit special fried rice’ is named that way for a reason – it’s legit delicious. It’s fried rice with chicken, shitake mushrooms, Chinese sausage, bbq roast pork, string beans and egg. So good.
For dessert we had the deep-fried custard bao. It was like little doughnuts balls dusted with sugar and Chinese five spice. In the middle it was filled with a beautiful eggy custard.
I heart Oriental Teahouse!
Olives x
Oriental Teahouse
Address: 378 Little Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3000
Website: https://orientalteahouse.com.au/
Phone: (03) 9600 4230
Trading hours: Mon-Thu: 11am-9pm, Fri-Sat: 11am-10pm, Sun: 11am-3pm