Hong Kong Dessert House

Came here on a Living Social Coupon for all you can eat dumplings. I was well aware of the limitations of the coupon which is you only have a 1 hour sitting, you get to order 1 dish each to start then you can order one plate after you have finished the first order. We arrive here at 12.30 and were seated pretty quickly but were completely ignored for 15 minutes before we could place our first order. I use the term 'ignored' because we witnessed 2 other tables get seated and served before we did, even though we were there first. Our first 2 plates of food eventually came out 30 minutes after we arrived while we sat there watching the 2 other tables get plates and plates of food presented to their table. We assume they were not using a voucher since we saw a mixture of different dishes like noodles and rice. Since it had taken so long to even get the first order, I requested the waiter take a second order for us while we were eating so that we could leave within the 1 hour time limit. She was surprised I asked but took our order for 2 more plates of dumplings. The second serving of dumplings came about 5 minutes after we finished eating our 1st order. Pan fried pork and cabbage dumplings were very oily. Pastry was not crispy and filling was ok but not great. We also ordered the beef and cabbage dumplings in chilli oil, wontons in chilli oil and wontons in soup. Funny thing is the wontons in soup were white dumplings in soup so I'm thinking they got the order wrong. The food was edible, it tasted ok but not worth coming back considering the service that was provided. If you are thinking about buying a coupon for this place, I would recommend against it. It's was very obvious to us they treat customers differently when they know they might be losing money on you. They would steep so low as to manipulate the conditions on the voucher to stop you from getting what was promised. I would never support a business that behaves this way and would treat any paying customers this poorly.

Nong Tang is a hidden gem off Little Bourke St. You won't see this walking through China Town unless you stumble in Mid City arcade. I was invited by the owner to try an array of dishes and I decided to take some friends who have recently moved to Melbourne. The stars were the pot stickers, and the pan fried beef dumplings. I must admit, the dumplings looked rather exquisite. My friends enjoyed the other dishes including the roast duck, steamed greens in oyster sauce and the hor fun noods. The flavour balance in the chilli oil dumplings could use some minor tweaks. It was a bit too sweet for my liking. There are other places that have better chilli oil dumplings like HuTong, Dumplings Plus, Din Tai Fung. It's not a deal breaker but I wouldn't order these again - but presentation was great. That said, I love how hidden and no frills this place is. I could easily be in some off the beaten track mall in Hong Kong or Singapore, and that made me feel really happy. Me and my friends enjoyed our experience at Nong Tang - this is what Chinatown is all about, and we didn't leave hungry. Get the dumplings and the pot stickers, share some greens and you'll be really happy.

We recently discovered this hidden gem with authentic Shanghainese cuisine and relaxing jazz (not sure but sounds like) music. The food was great, atmosphere - pleasant and staff - attentive. We like that instead of ordering just 1-2 big meals, we could order a lot of different small ones. The same in price but much more varieties. We enjoyed our dinner and will be happy to come back again!

Staff was friendly, but there was only 1 staff and she struggled to cope with the seating session. A little disappointed as the food I wanted was "running out" in other words no more, funnily enough only 6 groups in at the time. The wait time was a longer than average around 35 minutes to the table, there was a 1 hour seating limit because we went on a scoopoon deal. Now for the food overall taste was mediocre, the wonton soup base was really tasty due to lots of msg, other than that the chilli dishes were balanced due to vinager offsetting some spice. But the taste of the fillings inside wrapper puts this place squarely on the average list. Tip mix the soup wonton into the chilli and flavour profile goes up a notch

Disappointing food. Food is on the expensive side. Noodles are not fresh, soup tastes like it was made from a packet of instant noodles. Rice was not aromatic, Mapo tofu sauce was seriously just sweet and sour sauce mixed with some chili (definitely unauthentic, minus points for tasting like the sauce came from a prepackaged jar). Dumplings were the worst, tasted like they were steamed straight from frozen( the mince meat inside gave it away). Everything tasted like it was loaded with MSG and imbalanced amounts of sugar. Not recommend, they really could have done better.

Hadthe mushroom dry noodles. It was ok, i thought the menu said the noodles are hand made, but I felt it might be a bit too smooth for handmade noodles. I might be wrong though. What’s really interesting in the chilli oil on the table. It has star anise and bay leaves in it, which means it gives an interesting flavour. The worse thing is the Zomato gold. They force customer to spend $25 per person, pre-discount, but most of their noodles are between $11-13, so that means they are forced to order more food unnecessarily. To be honest I think Zomato is really making these small businesses run out of business, or use tricky ways like additional rules to make money. The whole thing is such a farce.