Melbourne does Chinese food two ways: the aunties out the back, and the high-concept dumpling bars built for Instagram. Guess which one gets all the hype.
My go-to order at any Chinese restaurant is pan-fried pork dumplings. While these are a consistent favourite of mine, I’ve come to accept that depending on where I eat, there are two distinct types of pan-fried pork dumplings.
The first, of course, is the $15 for 15-piece special, where you can see aunties out the back in the kitchen stuffing and wrapping each one perfectly in half a second. These juicy parcels arrive piled up on top of each other on a plastic plate and it’s usually a ‘serve-yourself’ situation with sauce – blending the soy, vinegar and chilli that are parked onto the table in their sticky-lidded bottles next to the one-ply tissue box. The fluorescents beat down to expose any mystery you’d seek from date night at a restaurant with a ‘cool vibe’ and a dimmer switch. But boy, are those dumplings good!
Don’t get me wrong, I love a good restaurant chosen purely on vibes. The ambience of the venue often contributes equally, if not more than the actual food itself, to a memorable dining experience. This is where the second type of pan-fried pork dumplings comes in.
Served on anything but a regular plain white plate, three (or another small number that conveniently never divides equally amongst your party size) allegedly bespoke dumplings arrive, paired with a soy-based dressing that has been expertly poured around the border like a moat. A fine sprinkling of diced spring onions, chives and dried shallots adds texture and freshness to this classic dish. All that extra fanfare is of course quite tasty, but the dumplings themselves usually aren’t much to write home about. It’s all smoke and mirrors to distract from the fact that these arrived mass-produced and frozen at the back door of the restaurant.
Because people don’t come to these sorts of restaurants for amazing dumplings, they come for the vibes.
The vibe of the thing
Famously, Australians are passionate about ‘the vibe of the thing’ – to quote The Castle. And luckily for us, Melbourne is full of eclectic restaurants that more than fill our vibe quota. For young people especially, they aren’t so focused on the longevity and reputation of iconic Cantonese dining you’d get from Flower Drum, they’re after the neon-light lined, urban-industrial chic blended with aesthetic Asian imagery at the newest restaurant group-owned joint on Chapel Street. The food isn’t inherently bad. It just makes up for what it lacks in authenticity with, you guessed it, the vibe.
I think Australians choose their Asian restaurants by weighing the balance between authentic food – whether it's the local mum-and-dad takeaway spot or the fine dining at Flower Drum – and an Instagrammable cocktail bar/Asian-fusion hotspot. So while Melbourne is lucky to have a vast collection of acclaimed Asian chefs across every tax bracket of dining, it irks me that the spots that usually make the cut as hip and cool are the ones owned by non-Asian people. Having chefs share recipes and dishes that are meaningful to them and their culture is what separates food for sustenance and food for the soul.
That’s the missing ingredient when tradition is traded for trendy in an Asian fusion restaurant owned by a white guy.
The harsh reality is that diluted and slightly Westernised iterations of Asian dining are what trend better on social media and appeal to the masses. Trust white society to take something from someone else and make it ‘better’.
Asian fusion, flattened
The concept of Asian fusion is a very Western idea. While it is true that there is overlap of flavours, cooking styles and dishes among various Asian countries, there is a huge difference between the origins of fresh Japanese sashimi, char kway teow and steamed build-your-own bao. Yet they’re often all found on the same menu. While Aussies deserve a medal for embracing Asian cuisine, lumping them all together and calling it a day is far too binary, and it only reinforces an ‘us and them’ perspective towards differentiating culture. It’s like if we said join club A if you want to play all ball sports ever, and join club B if you want to play all non-ball sports ever. It’s just not that simple.
Chinese food for white people
A friend who’s also Chinese Australian like me refers to these places as ‘Chinese food for white people’, which just about shuts down any validity of the restaurant being authentic or worthwhile in the eyes of ethnically Chinese Australians. I think she’s bang on. Chinese restaurants for white people aren’t about sharing a raw and sentimental part of one’s culture with others.
Chinese restaurants for white people aren’t about sharing a raw and sentimental part of one’s culture with others. It's about serving people the idea of multiculturalism tailored to appeal to a Western audience
It's about serving people the idea of multiculturalism tailored to appeal to a Western audience, bundled up in a three-piece pan-fried pork dumpling dish fresh out of the freezer. Served by an inner-city white guy with a bleach-blonde buzz cut and a nose piercing to go with your $24 Singapore Sling; diners can go to sleep at night thinking about how they’re so worldly.
I’ll be the first one to put my hand up and say that I have, on many occasions, chosen the second type of vibe-weighted sans-authenticity pork dumpling. It’s also true that Australians have a lot of love for the mum-and-dad spots that promise tried-and-true combination fried rice and honey chicken takeaway on a Friday night. It’s certainly not a crime to enjoy both.
But the fact that Asian food for white people is even a concept at all shows that despite our badge of multiculturalism, the Melbourne dining scene still has a long way to go in holding Asian-owned hospitality businesses to the same level of it factor as their white-owned counterparts. I’m optimistic that one day, maybe there will only be one type of pan-fried pork dumpling for me to enjoy.
