Little Red Dumpling - Toombul

Pre lockdown, we decided to check out the new arcade at Toombul, Archie Brother's Cirque Electric, the arcade itself was fun but a bit expensive. Another highlight of the new Upstairs portion of the centre was its new dining precinct. With quite a few new restaurants to try out, my friends decided to stick with the more conservative option at Little Red Dumpling for an early dinner. 

Consistent with the themes at other restaurants, there was a lot of red brick and neon lights. 

Consistent with our preferences, the menu and ordering was available on tablet, allowing us sufficient time to pick and choose without having to find a waitress to put down our order.

My companion had the lamb noodle, he said it was quite oily, but the lamb was tender albeit fatty. The meat was also very fragrant for lamb. The broth itself was light and wholesome with the noodles having a good texture to it. 

Although it looks similar, I had a serve of beef noodle. Again the beef was soft and generous in portion but very fatty. There was a thick layer of oil atop the soup and there was an abundance of noodles underneath, making it excellent value for money. The lettuce was also quite fresh and crunchy.

 

 

We ordered two portions of dumplings to share, this was the pan fried pork bun. For some reason the bun wasn't the soft fluffy buns that we had been used to in other dumpling shops, this was far more akin to the regular gyoza skins which was fairly disappointing. It did however have a fairly crispy base but there was no soup in the dumplings.

 

We also had a serve of pan fried pork dumplings. Again the skin was thick but not fluffy, with a good amount of meat in the centre which wasn't soupy, but at least the base was crispy enough.

Our most disappointing dish of the meal was the Xiao Long Bao. Coming 20 minutes after we had finished every other dish, we thought the delays had been because they were wrapping them in the kitchen, but what we were served were frozen machine made dumplings. From the way the top of the dumplings are formed you can easily tell these were not prepared by hand. The skins were cracked and there was absolutely no soup retention at all in the dumplings at all. Even the frozen ones I buy from the supermarket and steam at home come out better than this. 

Price Range: $20 - $30pp

Taste: 4/10

Value: 4/10

Service: 7/10

Environment: 7/10