Piggy in GC for Christmas- Part II

February 10, 2013

Mandarin Court
2374 Gold Coast Hwy, Mermaid Beach
07 5572 3333

We woke up to the beautiful sunny skies in Gold Coast on Boxing Day, and P.Mummy and P.Daddy were excited- finally after a few days of Japanese and really expensive meal, I was taking them to Yum Cha!  I booked Ming Court on that day and thought I’d call to double check my booking.  Guess what?  It’s friggin CLOSED.  How dare they close for Christmas when I BOOKED for the damn fcking table?

What to do but to scramble to find another yum cha place, and P.Daddy spotted a yum cha place on one of the Hilton Hotel magazines.  It sounded completely touristy but we didn’t know where else to go so we decided to give them a call.  Fortunately Mandarin Court was open and they can accommodate us so off we went.

Mandarin Court was situated in a Gold Coast highway shopping strip, and indeedy it looked SUPER touristy.  We were a bit skeptical about this place but since we were here we might as well try it.

We started off with our favourites: mine was the deep fried taro balls (Wu Gork) and parents’ favs, BBQ Pork in Puff Pastry (Char Siu Sou).  They were delicious.  Although the BBQ Pork Puff Pastry was a bit too oily.

We then had the char siu bao (BBQ Pork Buns).  OK, so they don’t looked fantastic, but it was actually surprisingly delicious.

Beef balls were next.  Normally the beef balls are accompanied by bean curd sheet and some sort of sour soy sauce like Lea and Pepper sauce.  But this one had neither, so mum had to ask for the sauce and make do.

I ordered bean curd sheet roll (fu pei guun).  For some reason  the waitress overheard that I don’t eat prawns and immediately ran back to tell us that this bean curd sheet roll has prawns in it, just in case I was actually allergic.  Wow, we thought that was great service.

Instead of having deep fried cuttlefish that’s normally offered in touristy “Chinese” yum cha, Mandarin Court even offered steamed curry flavoured cuttlefish, which was tender and flavoursome.  Of course, if you wanted those deep fried cuttlefish they were on offer too.

Ok I have a LOT of favourite in Yum Cha heehee, so another favourite of mine are pudding/ savoury cakes.  First one is the pan fried turnip cake (lo bak go) and the second one is pan fried taro cake.  As you can see that I ordered quite a few taro dishes, and that’s because hubby doesn’t like taro and hates it when I order it.  Since he wasn’t there I can order as much as I liked!

The quality of these two are slightly higher than what you can get in Brisbane and Melbourne CBD, so I was pretty impressed.

I also requested vegetarian steamed rice noodle roll (cheung fun, and no, not “soft spring rolls” which is how one free publication described it as :P).  They normally came in prawn, beef or char siu, but I actually like mine vego style.  They even put the soy sauce on the side dish as requested, so we can control the amount of saltiness.  My only complaint was that they did not really cut the cheung fun and with firm vegies like gai lan it’s really hard to consume them.

Dessert time!  Of course I had to order egg tarts!  There are two types of Egg Tarts, ones that are flaky and ones made with short crust pastry.  I liked them both to be honest and at Mandarin Court they made theirs with flaky pastry.  It was quite nice.

Somehow, mum went to the toilet and found this.  No I am not kidding but this is not what you think!  LOL.  On her way to the toilet, she smelt what Cantonese called “chou cho” (smelly grass).  I know it doesn’t sound appetising but it’s a herb that we use to make green bean sweet soup and it’s supposed to be good for you.  I googled it and I think the english name is Common Rue herb.  Anywayz, she smelt this herb and without even bothering about the toilet ran back to us and tell dad to go smell it also (yes I have a weird family).  Then when dad went to the toilet he decided to ask the manager whether it’s green bean soup and it was.  It was funny though how my parents found this as they never push that trolley over cos there were so many Westerners.  They must have assumed that no one was willing to try this.

I haven’t had green bean soup for a lonnnnnnggg time as we don’t know where to buy this “smelly grass” herb so I thought the flavour was quite good although it was slightly watery and too mushy.

Overall, we were surprised and impressed by the offering at Mandarin Court.  Whilst they do offer touristy deep fried stuff they also offer pretty authentic food that was quite nice.  My dad’s only complaint was that it was too expensive, but for approx $70 in total I thought it wasn’t too bad.  7.5/10

Post navigation

← Piggy goes to GC for Christmas

The Premises →