China Bar - Swanston Street

 

 

China Bar is a chain of, well, as the name would suggest, Chinese restaurants. Open until the early hours of the morning, China Bar serves up a variety of dim sum, rice dishes and other Chinese eats.

But is the food any good? Does this even matter when you’re being served at 2am in the morning? I say it does - and China Bar was definitely dissapointing on the food front. The prawn and garlic chive dumplings had no flavour, the shanghai dumplings were soggy and the pan fried pork dumplings were cold. They weren't even cheap on dumpling standards - the dim sum worked out to be over $2 a piece - even Hutong's dumplings are much cheaper than that, and that is saying something!



 

 

The highlight of the night was by far the beef in black bean sauce with rice noodle - the beef was tender, the noodles cooked well and the whole dish was surprisingly full of flavour.

 

With such top quality Melbourne eateries open into the wee hours of the morning, there really is no excuse for a soggy, on the expensive side, dumpling!

Food: 2/5
Service: 3/5
Venue: 3/5
Total: 8/15
Verdict: don’t bother - stick with Shark Fin House