It all came together within about 24 hours - on Wednesday afternoon, I saw a friend's facebook picture of them eating noodles + 50 dumplings courtesy of a voucher for Little Red Dumpling, a dumpling bar I'd been to last year. A quick google revealed the voucher was still current on Scoopon. The next day we received an offer for babysitting, so when the Mrs asked me to organise dinner out, it was an easy decision to buy the
Scoopon voucher, book in for that evening (they still had space at a later timeslot, which suited us fine), and the rest, as they say, is a very full stomach!
The Scoopon voucher is still selling for the next week and a half - you can choose from $29 for 2 people, or $55 for 4 people. It's all you can eat dumplings and noodles in 90 minutes. The voucher is available immediately in your Scoopon account after paying, and can be used until 11 August 2015, subject to booking availability.
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| Storefront |
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| Front counter |
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| Shop interior |
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| Takeaway waiting area; high chair |
In case it wasn't already obvious, this place is Chinese... all the seating is on wooden stools, though the high chairs look a lot less rustic than the rest of the furniture! When we got there, my voucher was scanned and we were given a seat near the front of the store. The place was fairly full when we arrived, and we stayed until closing time, which explains how I got a shot of the empty interior shown above.
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| Sauce / Vinegar + menu |
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| Uniform |
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| First round |
We ordered two noodles and two lots of dumplings first up. The food came within 15 minutes, and all pretty piping hot.
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| Braised beef noodle soup (mild-medium spicy) |
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| Chicken noodle soup |
The soups were well received on a cool autumn night. Each of these dishes sell for $9.80, and I felt the ratio of meat to noodles could be a bit higher.
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| Pan-fried pork dumplings |
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| Pan-fried pork dumplings - bite shot |
I have high expectations for this type of dumpling because it's one of the very few things I can make/cook myself with any degree of competence. The ones here were reasonable, not noticeably juicy, and were cooked fairly well with a crispy bottom. At $9.80 for 8 pieces, I could easily spend $30 on a meal of just these dumplings, but I don't think I would.
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| Chicken and prawn dumplings |
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| Chicken and prawn dumplings - bite shot |
The other dumplings on the menu are the boiled variety, with a choice of a few different fillings. They're all $9.80 per serve of 12, except for those with prawn or lamb which are $11.80.
We made short work of the two dumpling dishes, and ordered another two serves of food. The plan was to enjoy our noodles whilst waiting for more dumplings. Apparently this was a no-no.
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| Chicken and prawn wonton soup |
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| Chicken and prawn wonton - bite shot |
This was $9.80 for a serve of 10 wontons. I have no lasting impressions of the dish.
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| Pork chives dumpling - bite shot |
Pretty happy with these dumplings too. After making our way through the second round of dumplings, we thought we'd get one more serve in. However after a waiter took the order, the waitress who served us earlier came and told us we weren't allowed to order any more because we hadn't finished our noodles. I couldn't understand why the goal posts had shifted so she tried to show me a condition on the voucher. She couldn't find it and ended up referring to the fine print on the website: "Each serve must be finished before ordering the next." This is pretty ambiguous, and I took it to mean if you order 4 serves of food (like we did for round one), you have to finish a serve before ordering more (like we did in round two, where we finished two dumpling dishes from round one, and ordered two more dishes). The waitress insisted we are meant to finish all the food from round one before we can order round two, and that she made a mistake in allowing our second order of dumplings when we hadn't finished noodles from first round. Let's just say I wasn't particularly impressed, especially given that we're only ordering one more serve of 8 dumplings...
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| Pan-fried pork dumplings - second serve |
So, after I dutifully finished my bowl of noodles and finally placed an order for round three, we waited more than 15 minutes for it to come out. This was slower than each of our two earlier orders, which involved more food (i.e. kitchen had to prepare more food), and when there were other/more customers around (i.e. kitchen had to prepare other people's food too). To top it off, these dumplings clearly spent a bit too long frying in the pan, so it was a bit of a sourish note to end the meal.
Overall food wise we avoided some of the stranger sounding combinations of dumpling fillings, and focussed on those we were more familiar with. Of the ones we ate, none were a stand out, but none were bad either, except the burnt bits in the last serve of pan fried dumplings. Speaking of which I think the ones I can make taste better, and are more fragrant and tasty by themselves. The ones we ate here needed sauce or the chilli oil.
Service wise it was often difficult to catch the staff's attention, even while they were walking around. It's like they have blinkers on most of the time. This is probably not usually an issue but when you're doing multiple orders on a time-limited all you can eat session, waiting to be able to order takes precious minutes away from potential eating time.
In the end we got a good deal - the value of our food was $72.60, so we saved over 60% by only paying $29. The 90 minute time limit should be sufficient for most people, allowing for about 3 round of orders assuming about 15 minutes wait for food following each order (each order takes around 10-15 minutes to fulfil) , and about 15 minutes eating time per round. If you're a big eater, you'll probably want to plan the order/quantity of your orders so as to not fall foul of the limitations. I guess one approach could be to order as many things as you want first round and only order more if you have room left, though that would also mean the large quantity of food might get cold in the meantime. One thing I would recommend is to not get noodles first up, as they take longer to get through compared to dumplings. If you're in the company of dining companions who are happy to share food like a noodle soup dish, you could instead aim for a shared noodle dish per round.
For the record, we had two bowls of noodles and 50 dumplings/wontons, so didn't manage to beat our friends' haul. Will I be back? Probably not at their normal prices, unless I was with someone who really wants to eat there, or I'm particularly craving boiled dumplings, or I'm too lazy to make my own pan fried ones. Of course, there's still time to get another voucher for another crack at the all you can eat bargain.
