02 April 2013

Yummy Eight ~ Chinese - Chinatown\City [CLOSED]

Breakfast, lunch and dinner at Yummy 8, Chinatown\City. It's super...

[CLOSED - MARCH-ISH 2014]

Yummy Eight specialises in dishes cooked in steamer basket thingies. Plus they make killer meaty noodle soups and hellbento breakfasts as well. We love it.



Yummy Eight is a super happy restaurant, a bright, pleasant space. It's not huge but there's enough room for a group or two, and it's plenty comfy for dual and solo feeders. The staff are super friendly and helpful, not to mention super kawaii.




We love the super happy terrific drawings on the menus and the cheery customer photos on the wall. There's one photo of a little fella slurping noodles with a huge grin on his face that has us giggling every visit.


DINNER...



Shredded tofu with coriander is wonderful, light and garlicky. The kale has a lovely mustard-y kick, it's chopped up into small pieces so you get bits of leaf and small bits of stalk. Good cheap veggie dishes are hard to find, these are highly recommended, $4.80 each.




Yummy 8 excels in the meaty noodle soup department. The noodles are made daily on the premises, and the broths are nice and sweet and meaty, just the way we like it. Noodles with mince is like a soup-y spag bolg made with pork mince. Mr Shawn is ecstatic. The hot & sour noodles has some bitey chilis floating around in a tangy sour broth. In the middle is an island of pickled chopped beans (almost the same as the acid beans at Fujia Chinese). We tried the small size for $9.80, which was plenty for big eaters like us. The $12.80 large size must be huge.


LUNCH...



We come back and have a lunch set each. Lunch set C comes with a veggie dish, a meat dish, rice and a soup - a sweet deal for $11.80. With two or three people you get a mini banquet going. We went for steamed pumpkin, steamed eggplant, steamed mushrooms with drumstick, and steamed pig trotter.




Black sesame and azuki bean ice cream for dessert - $2.80. It's the perfect size (one scoop) for the digestion after a big lunch.


BREAKFAST...



We come back for some intriguing breakfast specials. Yummy 8 opens at 9am and breakfast is served all day.




Breakfast round one, clockwise:
  • Eight treasure porridge - $4.80. A thin soupy rice porridge with more treasures than we can identify including red bean, corn, barley. It's sweet and savoury, fun and rehydrating.
  • Miss chicken must have her tea egg - 80 cents.
  • Sweet-toothed Mr Shawn must have rice cakes with sugar - $2 for 3 pieces. These were like a rice cake pikelets in sugar syrup. Another fun one.
  • Sweet rice wine with egg - $3.80. A pot of thin, sweet soup that tastes of sugar syrup, with whisps of egg. The sweet and sour goji berries added some depth.



Breakfast round two: dry tasty rice noodles - $4.80. This was our favourite: a simple yet amazing dish of rice noodles dressed with oil and soy, sprinkled with fresh and dry shallots, served cool. The oil has some magic umami property that raise our monobrows with delight, it was almost cheesey in flavour. The other breakfast dishes were fun to try but this one we'll be back for.

[Edit - reader LucyL translated the Chinese menu and says the magic umami ingredient is pig fat. No wonder they're so yummy. Thanks Lucy!]




Breakfast round three: Xiao Long Bao - $6.80 for six pieces. These cute little steamed dumplings are filled with soup and a little pork, causing mouth flavour explosions just like on tv commercials for chewing gum with fruity juicy centres. We don't usually get excited about dumplings but we dig these bigtime.




Yummy Eight is at 345B Sussex St Sydney, near corner of Liverpool Street.

11 comments:

  1. Those rice cakes sound tasty. And I love that you seem to have covered practically everything on the menu!

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    Replies
    1. They were like squished mochi fried and then soaked in sugar syrup. Tasty is an understatement. We've still got a few more things to try there too, there's a mystery noodle we are wanting to try.

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  2. It's impressive enough for me that they make their own noodles every day, that has to say something, right? Looks really tasty, unfamiliar, but tasty :) I haven't had a lot of Taiwanese food, must make more of an effort. Cheers for that!

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  3. Yay new Taiwanese restaurant! Oodles of noodles to try by the looks of it :)

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  4. The dry tasty rice noodles says on the menu in chinese that it's "pig fat with noodles" - maybe that's what gave you the umami hit! :)

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  5. not taiwanese, it is from HuNan province of central China

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    Replies
    1. Oh, we thought it was Taiwanese. We will have to check with the restaurant and confirm.

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    2. We checked, they said it was Chinese. We think we asked previously if it was Taiwanese and the lady said yes, but maybe it was a universal yes...

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  6. These guys no longer do breakfast; opening hours Mon-Fri: 1.30pm-10pm
    Sat-Sun: 12pm-10pm

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the update, it's getting hard to find places open early in the morning.

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Thanks for your comment joy - please keep your musings happy - if you want to complain about a restaurant please do it on a restaurant review site (or your own blog) - we're all about celebrating cultural diversity and the great eats that come along with it :-)

Our ethics: We pay for all our own meals and travel (though sometimes Mum shouts us).