Shark Fin House

Shark Fin House

131 Little Bourke St, Melbourne

(Ph) 9663 1555

P went back to Sydney last weekend and had yumcha there - made me really crave yumcha so we decided to go this weekend =) Out of the many yumcha places in the city, Shark Fin House wins by far. I actually quite like New Shanghai with their extravagant decor and relatively inexpensive food, but they don't do yumcha there anymore =(

We got there at 11am and I was surprised there was only about 15 people waiting outside. Last time I went with about 10 friends we booked a table for 11am and there was a massive line at least 20 meters outside - but that was 'cause we were waiting for the restaurant to open. This time, people had already started moving in by the time we got there =) The manager asked us if we had booked and we said no and got worried, but he told us to go in the lift up to level 1 straight away =)

We were the first table to be seated at level 1, think we had just missed out on ground level =( We got our tea and had to wait about 15mins before any food came out - and it was all very random dumplings and untraditional dim sims. This waitress kept bringing carts of food over (about 3 times) and we kept saying we didn't want anything 'cause we were waiting for the traditional dim sims! We felt bad we kept rejecting her, but we knew since we only had 2 tummies to fill, we couldn't order anything we didn't really want =(

Finally P was so starving that at 11.25am he ordered a fried har gao - he said he felt like one so it wasn't a random dish, but it wasn't that awesome. And we had to ask the manager for mayonnaise 'cause the fobby waiter boy didn't know what mayonnaise was lol.

Har gao, siu mai

At last the har gao and siu mai came! Although P ate all 3 har gao's 'cause I'm not a fan of prawns =P

Spareribs

And our favourite spareribs! <3 Before I met P I wasn't such a crazy fan of spareribs, but today we were fighting over this dish =) with its little bits of taro soaked in sparerib and blackbean sauce - delicious!

BBQ pork bun

The bbq pork buns here are the best - the bbq pork is so tender and leaking with juices, while the bun is soft and fluffy and just absolutely delicious =)

I ordered the runny sand bun (流沙包) 'cause I knew you need to specially order it and takes about 15mins for it to come - you know its freshly steamed =)

Runny sand bun

This has got to be my new yumcha favourite <3 I had it last time I came here and fell in love with it - it's so different to all other buns, and definitely surpasses my ex-favourite lotus paste bun =)

The bun is filled with an egg custard and sweet salty egg mixture, while the bun is slightly eggy (I think? They're not normally yellow but the ones here are - can't really taste the bun 'cause the insides have such a distinct taste). The sweetened salty egg paste is so unique - a taste of sweet then salty then sweet then salty... ahhhh <3 The texture is very unique as well - slightly grainy but yet so liquid! It's so runny that you have to be very careful when you eat it, can't pour it over your mouth 'cause it would burn you, but can't open it up to cool either or it'll run down your hands =P I could seriously eat a dozen of these myself, kinda regret not ordering an extra basket of it and taking it home haha

How can you end a yumcha without a tofu dessert, I would have ordered egg tarts as well but I didn't 'cause 1. I don't really like the egg tarts here (they're very small and they use the flakey pastry which I'm not a fan of) and 2. me and P had decided to make our own egg tarts tonight anyway =)

Tofu dessert

The tofu dessert here was a little disappointing though - the waitress (it's actually that nice waitress who kept trying to bring us food at the start, so we didn't have the heart to complain about her =P) didn't manage to scrape all the top layer off before serving it so there were bits of the solid layer in our bowl - kinda like when you warm milk up and there's that layer of solid milk on top. The actual tofu dessert was very good though - smooth and silky, and the syrup was not too sweet and slightly gingery =)

Definitely still my favourite yumcha place in the city!

8.5/10

C.
xo

See Part 2 for dinner here..